Smith. — On Maori Nomenclature. 403 



illustrating the exercise of this faculty is told in connection 

 with a name given to a house. Two Europeans had heen 

 employed to build the house, and on its completion a name 

 for it had to be found. A meeting was convened, the matter 

 was discussed, and one of the Europeans was asked to name 

 the house. He called to his mate, sitting on the roof of the 

 new structure, " What name shall it be, Jack?" The reply 

 was a very coarse expression, which I will not repeat. The 

 assembled Maoris catching the sound of the words and taking 

 a fancy to it, they were put into Maori shape as a single word, 

 and adopted as the name by which the house was thereafter 

 called. In course of time the surveyors came, made their 

 survey of the land, marking the site and getting the name of 

 the house, which was carefully put upon their plan, where it 

 now remains, and awaits the future New Zealand antiquary 

 and philologist, who, if successful in tracing its origin and sig- 

 nification, may sympathize with Mr. Pickwick in his experience 

 in connection with the Cobham inscription. 



In murdering the Queen's English, however, the Maori is 

 not so great an offender as is, or has been, the pakeha in 

 murdering Maori. In the early days of the colony the Waira- 

 rapa Valley was called " Wy-drop " by the Wellington settlers. 

 Any one calling it by the proper name would have been 

 laughed at as a prig. On the West Coast, between Manawatu 

 and Otaki, may be seen the site of the pa to which the chief 

 Eangihaeata retired after the disturbances in 1846. The 

 locality is known to the settlers near as "Bully Taffer," its 

 proper name being Poroutawhao. Not far from there is a 

 place which I had heard spoken of as " Jacky Town," and, 

 being curious to find out the origin of this name, I made in- 

 quiries, with the result that I found the name was a Maori 

 one — W as, in fact, Eke-talmna. Instances of this kind could 

 be multiplied indefinitely. A place the Maori name of which 

 was Te Urukapana, was known to Europeans as "The Woolly 

 Carpenters." 



The advantage of preserving native names as clues for the 

 historian of the future is obvious to us all, and need not be 

 dwelt upon here, but it is very desirable that these names be 

 preserved in their correct form. A very great deal of careless- 

 ness has been shown in the past with reference to this point. 

 Names have been taken carelessly, wrongly spelt, and other- 

 wise faulty. A glaring instance of this is the name " Otago." 

 There was no Otago in New Zealand until we invented that 

 name. It is not a Maori word at all ; it is only a specimen of 

 murder perpetrated on Maori. It was the form which the 

 name Otakou took in the mouths of the whalers and sealers 

 who were the first pakehas resident in that locality. To 

 come nearer home, we have a recently- opened cemetery not 



