Aotearoa

Aotearoa (pronounced [aoˌteaˈroa] ( listen)) is the most widely known and accepted Māori name for New Zealand. It is used by both Māori and non-Māori, and is becoming increasingly widespread in the bilingual names of national organisations, such as the National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.

Translation

Placenames are often difficult to translate, and the original derivation of Aotearoa is not known for certain. Many meanings have been given for the name. The word can be broken up as: aotea = cloud, and roa = long, (white being added in the translation as it is the most common colour of cloud) and it is accordingly most often glossed as “The land of the long white cloud”. Or Aotearoa can also be broken up as: aotea and roa or ao tea and roa. Aotea = could also be the name of one of the canoes of the great migration, the great Magellan cloud near the bright star Canopus in summer, a bird or a food; ao = cloud, dawn, daytime, or world; tea = white or clear, perhaps bright; roa = long or tall. A mythological story or historical fiction offers a good picture of how the name was given or something of the ideas which motivated it. In some traditional stories, Aotearoa was the name of the canoe of the explorer Kupe, and he named the land after it. In another version, Kupe’s daughter was watching the horizon and called “He ao! He ao!” (“a cloud! a cloud!”). A different story figures that it was actually his wife and not his daughter who called out these words. The story tells that the voyagers of that period were guided by a long white cloud in the course of the day and by a long bright cloud at night. Consequently, after a long voyage, the sign of land to Kupe’s crew was the long cloud hanging over it. The curious cloud caught Kupe’s attention and he said “Surely is a point of land”. His wife called out “He ao! He ao!” (“a cloud! a cloud!”). Afterwards his wife’s words and the cloud which greeted them, Kupe named the land Aotearoa – “long white cloud”. The first land sighted was accordingly named Aotea (Cloud), now Great Barrier Island. When a much larger landmass was found beyond Aotea, it was called Aotea-roa (Long Aotea).

Usage

• The use of Aotearoa to refer to the whole of New Zealand is a post-colonial usage.
• In pre-colonial times, Māori did not have a commonly-used name for the whole New Zealand archipelago.
• Until the 20th century, ‘Aotearoa’ was used to refer to the North Island only. As an example from the late 19th century, the first issue of Huia Tangata Kotahi, a Māori language newspaper, dated 8 February 1893, contains the dedication on page 1: ‘He perehi tenei mo nga iwi Māori, katoa, o Aotearoa, mete Waipounamu’ (This is a publication for the all Māori tribes of Aotearoa and the South Island), where ‘Aotearoa’ can only mean the North Island.