New Zealand place names
Overview of place names in New Zealand / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about New Zealand place names?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
Most New Zealand place names have a Māori or a British origin. Both groups used names to commemorate notable people, events, places from their homeland, and their ships, or to describe the surrounding area. It is unknown whether Māori had a name for the whole of New Zealand before the arrival of Europeans, but post-colonisation the name Aotearoa (commonly translated as 'long white cloud') has been used to refer to the whole country. Dutch cartographers named the islands Nova Zeelandia, the Latin translation of the Dutch Nieuw Zeeland (after the Dutch province of Zeeland). By the time of British exploration, the country's name was anglicised to New Zealand.
Many of the early Māori names were replaced by Europeans during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Government amendments in 1894 and the establishment of the New Zealand Geographic Board in the mid-1940s led to the encouragement of original Māori names, although differing spellings and anglicised pronunciations persisted. Many names now have alternative or dual English and Māori names or, in a few rare cases, dual Māori names or dual English names. Most names have never been made official, but if they are mentioned in authoritative publications they are considered recorded names. Colloquial names in New Zealand result from an ironic view of the place's entertainment value, or plays on advertising mottos, or are shortened versions of the full name. Some places tried to capitalise on the success of The Lord of the Rings films by linking themselves to the movies.