358 Transactions. 



the name "The Sealing-wax Eye" — Te Karu-harare. In another instance 

 two chiefs had gone into the bush pigeon-shooting, and were caught by bad 

 weather, which necessitated a four days' lodging under a very flimsy shelter 

 made from the fronds of the wheJci tree-fern {Dicksonia squarrosa). A niece 

 was born to one of them about the time, and duly received the name Te- 

 whare-wheki (the wheki hut). Another young woman has the name Nga- 

 rangi-putifuti (the flower days), a romantic-sounding name, the beauty of 

 which is seriously marred when it transpires that the flowers referred to 

 were those placed about the corpse of a dead relative, and the name is 

 nothing more than a reminder of the death — a sort of verbal funeral card. 

 I had for years speculated as to how one old friend of mine came by the 

 name of Wai-hopi (soapy water), and at last screwed up my courage to ask 

 him. A sister of his had died, and the corpse had been washed with soap 

 and water, a combination which had been lately introduced. But once 

 in a way a name has a touch of true romance, as when a woman calls her 

 son Tama-ini(-'po' {son of the draught by night), to commemorate the fact 

 that she had been wooed at the brink of the well, whither she had gone one 

 night for a drink. A curious custom of the Maoris was that of changing 

 their own or their children's names to commemorate some important event — 

 generally, again, a disaster. A moribund chief is placed in a tent, and dies 

 there, whereupon a friend adopts the name of Whare-taaka (house of di ck 

 — duck for canvas). Several persons are drowned by the upsetting of a 

 canoe, and a whole crop of names recalls the event : Mate-moana (sea 

 disaster), Waka-tahuri (canoe overturned), and so on — a large proportion of 

 these names displacing, or attempting to displace, names which have been 

 borne for years. One old Maori used generally to refer to his son by the 

 name of Te-okanga (the incision), a name which I knew was not the youth's 

 baptismal name ; inquiry elicited the information that the lad's sister had 

 succumbed after an operation, hence the name. Any one acquainted with 

 Bible history will be struck by the similarity of the Maori customs in re- 

 spect of names to those recorded of the ancient Semitic race, the inference 

 being not that the Maoris are Semitic by descent, but that such customs are 

 appropriate to a primitive people at a certain stage of their development. 



We are now in a position to make a few inquiries into place-names. 

 Few races have been so prodigal in the bestowal of local names. Every 

 peak, saddle, knoll, and spur ; every bend, rapid, and pool in a stream ; 

 every creek and bay, beach and headland, had its name, as well as every 

 mountain-range, river, and sea. Pas and camping-grounds, battlefields and 

 cultivations, fishing-grounds and landing-places, sites of eel-weirs or of bird- 

 snares — all were well known by their ov n partici lar names ; and it is much 

 to be regretted that the vast mass of these names has been allowed to pass 

 into oblivion, and that those which have been preserved have in many cases 

 been ridiculously mutilated, while not a few have been transferred to locali- 

 ties far removed from those to which they belong. The mutilation of names 

 is, naturally perhaps, more rampant in the South Island than in the North. 

 Here we have frequent confusion between " i " and " e," between " a " and 

 " o " ; and in this particular part of the North .Island you have the example 

 of the Natives in dropping an " h " : it is no more correct to write and say 

 " Wa/nganui " for " Whavganin " than it would be to write and say " Amp- 

 stead Eath" and plead the example there of the natives. But in the South 

 Island violent changes have been made. Temiika represents the Maori 

 name Te-umic-kaha (the fiercely heated oven), while Tapanui does duty for 

 the native form Te-tapuwae-o-Uenuku (the footprint of Venuku). In the 



