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Glossary for place names

<- Homepage: Our place names: Ngāti Maniapoto stories. Also Curriculum and Resources.


Colonise, colonisation
Colonisation is the act of one country settling another place, to become the new rulers of the new country, and to live in the new country.

Commemorate
Mark an event or person by doing or producing something. Recall and show respect for something or someone.

Creation myth
A symbolic story of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it.

Cultural icon
A cultural icon can be a symbol, logo, picture, name, face, person, building or other image. It is easily recognized and generally represents an object or idea with great cultural significance to a wide cultural group. It has a special status as representing, or important to, or loved by, a particular group of people, a place, or a period in history.

Double (dual) naming
The adoption of an official place name that combines two earlier names. For some of these in Aotearoa New Zealand, either name (usually Māori or English) can be used.

European
In Aotearoa New Zealand, Europeans are New Zealanders of European descent.

Founding ancestor
The first people to arrive in Aotearoa New Zealand were the ancestors of Māori. These first settlers arrived from Polynesia approximately between 1200 and 1300 AD. They discovered these lands as they explored the Pacific, navigating by the ocean currents, winds, and stars. Often celebrated, the founding ancestors were the first people to name places, in many cases after themselves.

Geographical feature
Often a landform such as hills, cliffs, mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, harbours etc.

Legend
An old story about famous people and events in the past.

Lineage
The ancestors from whom a person comes from.

Immigrant
People who move to a new country to live there.

Māori
Māori are tangata whenua, the indigenous (original inhabitants) people, of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Metaphorical
Something is metaphorical when you use it to stand for another thing.

Pākehā
New Zealander of European descent.

Polynesian
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians.

Restore, restoring
Bring back, re-establish, repair.

Migration
A journey, often seasonal, from one region to another.

Oral map
Place naming for Māori was a way of mapping an area. Place names often had stories, waiata, or chants behind them, serving as triggers for memory of such things as the value, use, ownership, past events, people etc of that place.

Oral tradition
Like a spoken story that works to store and communicate knowledge, culture, and ideas.

Settlement
A place, usually one which has been uninhabited, where people set up a community. Official agreement that resolves a conflict.

Settler
A person who moves with a group of others to live in a new country ore area.

Surveyor
A person whose job is to measure and describe the details of an area of land.

Tradition
Traditions can be stories, beliefs, and customs that are maintained and passed on from one generation to another.

Whakapapa
Genealogy. But it literally means to create a base or foundation. Whakapapa is the recitation of genealogies or stories which create a base or foundation of meaning for people. As whakapapa can include genealogies or stories about the entire world, whakapapa are ways by which people come into relationship with the world, with people, and with life.