354 Transactions 



Art. XLVlI. — A Plea for the Scientific Study of Maori Names. 



By H. W. Williams, M.A., Archdeacon of Waiapu. 



\_Read before the Wanganui Philosophical Society, 12th August, 1912.] 



The subject of Maori names is one that has been dealt with many times 

 in the past ; but, so far as I know, no systematic or thorough inquiry has 

 ever been made into the principles which guided the Maoris in their 

 nomenclature. 



In speaking of Maori names I have in view chiefly place-names ; but 

 for the purposes of investigation it will be necessary to say something also 

 about personal names, names of trees, birds, and fish, and a little about 

 the names of some ordinary objects. 



Before coming to the names themselves, it may be well to make r 

 remark about the structure of ^ the language. It is well known that the 

 Maori alphabet contains but ten consonants and five vowels, and that all 

 syllables are open — that is, all end with a vowel ; or, in other words, two 

 consonants cannot come together. This means that the Maoris have only 

 fifty-five possible syllables, by the permutations of which all words have 

 to be formed. The fall effect of this fact is often lost sight of, and it is 

 not readily appreciated till a comparison is made with the English language. 

 Assuming, for the sake of argument, that we have in English only five 

 vowels, we have a far wider range of consonants ; we admit combinations 

 of these consonants in twos, and even in threes, and, further, allow syllables 

 to end with a consonant or combination of consonants. This wealth of 

 material provides us with no less than three hundred open syllables and 

 tweuty-eig' t thousand closed syllables, which would make ample provision 

 for an entirely monosyllabic language far beyond the range of vocabulary 

 found necessary for most ordinary s eakers of English. And these numbers 

 will be largely increased if account be taken of the full number of vowel- 

 sounds actually existing in English. 



Returning, then, to Maori, with its fifty-five syllables (of which in 

 practice four are never used), we can see that the very frequent recurrence 

 of the syllables produces that sense of similiarity in Maori names which is 

 so confusing to the English ear, and we can understand that variety in 

 the names may require the use of a number of syllables which seems un- 

 • necessary to the hurrying civilization of Europeans. 



The advent of the white man brought into the world of the Maori a 

 number of new objects for which names had to be found. In some cases 

 he took the name he heard applied to an object, and made such alteration 

 as his defective alphabet demanded ; but where left to himself he varied 

 from the , strict transliteration which would have been followed by a 

 European. For instance, he made "horse" into hoiho, "carpenter" into 

 kamura, "publichouse " into paparakanta, and " needle " into ngira. In the 

 last case the initial " ng " is no doubt by way of compensation for the in- 

 ability to reproduce the consonantal sound of " dl " in the second syllable. 

 Some of the Maori transliterations are a pointed criticism of our slovenly 

 methods of pronunciation : had we uttered pure vowel -sounds the Maori 

 could hardly have made tupeka do duty for " tobacco," or paera for 

 " boiler." But not infrequently the Maori ingeniously found an appellative 

 with a thoroughly Native ring about it for some new acquirement. Iron he 



