Wanganui and Whanganui: a Clash of Identities
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Wanganui and Whanganui: a clash of identities Philip W. MATTHEWS 1. Introduction New Zealand is a small country with a 2006 population of 4,143, 282 (Statistics New Zealand, n.d.: a), of whom 14.6% self identified as Maori (the indigenous people of New Zealand and numbering about 645,000), 67.6% self identified as Pakeha/European (hereafter Pakeha, and coming mainly from the United Kingdom and some from other European countries), 10.4% self identified as “New Zealander”, a new census category (Statistics New Zealand n.d.: b), which is merged here with Pakeha (and giving a combined total of about 3,3000,000), with the remainder identifying themselves in other ways. The number of persons who self identify as being of mixed race percentages is not available but will overlap to a considerable extent the Maori, Pakeha and all other self identities and subsume many hundreds of thousand New Zealanders. Maori is an official language and English, while not an official language, is the dominant language and is used regularly by almost all the inhabitants of New Zealand. Responsibility for changes in the names of geographical and other features rests with the New Zealand Geographic Board (NZGB). Over the last eighty five years they have made hundreds of name changes, usually in the form of correcting a spelling mistake in both Maori and non Maori names or replacing one name with another. Changing place names is an ongoing process. Of specific interest is the case of Wanganui, a city and district with about 43,000 people (the word district is used to refer to the entire area—the city and the surrounding area for which the Wan- ganui District Council is the local government authority). Here, on the 11th of February 2009 Te Runanga O Tupoho (2009) (hereafter the Runanga), an organization or council representing the southern tribes and subtribes in the Whanganui River valley and with Ken Mair as a spokesperson, lodged a submission with the NZGB requesting that the name Wanganui be changed to Whanganui (See Sections 4.3 Onoma 46 (2011), 167-208. doi: 10.2143/ONO.46.0.2975534. © Onoma. All rights reserved. 996190_ONOMA_46_07.indd6190_ONOMA_46_07.indd 167167 224/04/134/04/13 114:414:41 168 PHILIP W. M ATTHEWS for a discussion of Maori orthography, 4.4 for the pronunciation of the two words and 4.5 for the meanings of Wanganui and Whan- ganui). On 30th March 2009 the NZGB initiated a public consultation on the proposal. On 10 August 2009 the Mayor of the Wanganui District Council, Michael Laws, lodged a submission opposing that by the Runanga (Wanganui District Council 2009). In total over 900 submissions were made to the NZGB. In September 2009 the NZGB made its decision public and on December 2009 the Minister for Land Information made public his decision. This issue prompted national and international comments on radio and television, in speeches and in the newspapers. In addition, there were many online forums. This study is based on one online forum “Should it be ‘Wanga- nui’ or ‘Whanganui’?” set up in 2008 by a newspaper, the New Zea- land Herald (2008-2009), in response to the opening of a major gov- ernment inquiry about Maori land ownership and other matters in the Wanganui district. It received many more comments once the Runanga and Wanganui District Council submissions were made. Over the seventeen months from May 13 2008 to October 27 2009 it received 1036 comments. The commentators identified themselves by a name, e.g. Ray, Kiwimum, taihakoa, THC, Fedup and Gackty Pants, and a location in New Zealand, e.g. Gonville (a suburb of Wanganui), Te Kaha, Auckland Central, Wanganui and Whanganui, or elsewhere, e.g. Australia, Japan, Kazakhstan and Albania. A handful of commentators identified themselves as either Maori, Pakeha or of mixed ancestry. In all cases there is no means of verifying their names, locations, nationalities, gender or “race”. It is also not known how many used more than one name in their contributions. In this study every third comment was selected. Thus the sequence is 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16 and so on. However, twelve of the selected com- ments were found for various reasons to be irrelevant. They were excluded and the next one was included but the original sequence is continued. Thus, 1, 4, 8, 10, 13, 16 and so on. This resulted in 345 comments, made by 276 commentators (see Table 1). The numbers in brackets throughout the paper, e.g. (0675), are those of the com- ments in the New Zealand Herald’s forum. The original spelling, punctuation and capitalization in the comments and in the references are kept and hence Maori and Pakeha are spelt in a variety of now incorrect ways. 996190_ONOMA_46_07.indd6190_ONOMA_46_07.indd 168168 224/04/134/04/13 114:414:41 WANGANUI AND WHANGANUI: A CLASH OF IDENTITIES 169 TOTALS No. of commentators 1 141626237276 No. of comments per 86543 2 1 – commentator Total comments 8 6 20 4 18 52 237 345 Table 1: The number of commentators and comments per commentator The study proceeds as follows: Section 2 contains a summary of each submission; Section 3 deals with the historic and current use of the two names, Wanganui and Whanganui; in Section 4 ten themes raised by the commentators are identified and for each theme (a) a selection of their views is given which either support or oppose the two submis- sions and (b) a commentary, drawn from other sources, is given about their views; and in Section 5 the Minister of Land Information’s deci- sion and its aftermath are commented on. Section 6 is the Conclusion. 2. The two submissions The first submission is that of the Runanga (2009), presented by Che Philip Wilson (though Ken Mair is a spokesman for the Runanga). This submission in favour of changing the name to Whanganui is sum- marized as follows: R1 the name is a Maori word; R2 the name is long standing; R3 the Whanganui tribe accepts two traditional origins of the mean- ing of the name; R4 a modern meaning has incorrectly developed; R5 the correct spelling is Whanganui; R6 the digraph [i.e. wh] represents a single sound; R7 the decision of the Wanganui District Council at a meeting on 24 February 2009 in favour of Wanganui belittled the Whanga- nui tribe’s culture; R8 it is important to the tribe and to the future members of the tribe that the name be spelt and pronounced correctly; R9 the identity of the Whanganui tribe is intrinsically linked to this correctness; and R10 Maori is an official language of New Zealand and therefore Maori words should be spelled correctly. 996190_ONOMA_46_07.indd6190_ONOMA_46_07.indd 169169 224/04/134/04/13 114:414:41 170 PHILIP W. M ATTHEWS The second submission was made by the Mayor, Michael Laws, “on behalf of not just the Wanganui District Council but on behalf of the people of Wanganui” (Wanganui District Council 2009). This submission, in favour of retaining the name “Wanganui” is summarized as follows: L1 two referendums have shown that Wanganui residents are ada- mantly opposed to any spelling alteration; L2 Wanganui is not a Maori name; it belongs to the entire Wanga- nui community and common usage has made it so over the past 170 years; L3 the name Wanganui has evolved within the community and the NZGB seeks to impose an alien solution on the community; L4 the name Wanganui has acquired a mana, heritage and identity of its own throughout New Zealand and the international com- munity; L5 Wanganui is one of many NZ place names that have evolved from their original spelling and meaning; L6 Wanganui has been accepted as the correct spelling by both Maori and Pakeha until comparatively recently and we know now that that was without the ‘h’; L7 there was no written Maori language when those given the responsibility were transcribing the name Wanganui; L8 Wanganui is the only Maori dialect that does not sound its ‘h’; this is the reason for the original spelling of Wanganui; L9 the “w” sound was probably recognised as a dialect difference and this sound more adequately represents the cultural place of local Maori within the wider district; L10 the Maori of Wanganui should have their unique dialect recog- nised in the spelling and the Runanga’s submission seems to fly in the face of recognising that uniqueness in that the “wh” will be pronounced a “f” rather than the local dialectal “w”; and L11 already Whanganui is being pronounced as Fonganui [i.e. /fo∞anui/] by those outside the district and this can cause cultural offence. 3. The use of the two names, Wanganui and Whanganui The river was initially called Knowsley by the British but from at least 1837 its name was Wanganui (Beaglehole 2009: 2). The government 996190_ONOMA_46_07.indd6190_ONOMA_46_07.indd 170170 224/04/134/04/13 114:414:41 WANGANUI AND WHANGANUI: A CLASH OF IDENTITIES 171 named the village established on it by the immigrants Petre (i.e. /pi:t¢/) but after a petition by thirty five residents of the village in 1844 the government agreed in 1854 to rename it Wanganui. Over time many organizations included the word Wanganui in their name. Some of the many current examples are Coastguard Wanganui, Mensa Wanganui, Riding for the Disabled Wanganui, Wanganui Chronicle and Wanganui Women’s Club (Wanganui Directory 2010 and Wan- ganui Yellow Pages 2010). The ‘Whanganui’ spelling has also been used from early on. Thus, on an 1841 chart of “Cook’s Strait” are the words “Whanganui Knowsley R Bar”, and an 1843 map, labelled “The islands of New Zealand” has the names “Whanganui or Knowsely R.” (Beaglehole 2009: 6).