New Zealand Place Names!

New Zealand is beautiful.

 Photo taken by Robert

and stolen by me!

In fact, it has such a large dose of The Excessively and Endlessly Scenic I can't imagine why I've never taken it seriously as a country.

I used to think it was because the population, family excepted, seemed so hardwired for Sourfaced and Mean-spirited Unpleasantness, but I now think there's another reason.  The PLACE NAMES!!!

Like, let me give you a recent example:

Breakfast time at John's and Janice says "Do you think it will rain today?"

John looks out the window before stating "I can't see why my poo poo reeks so decidedly!"

I'm totally taken aback.  John is such a consummate gentleman I can't imagine he'd bring up the state of his bowels at the breakfast table, nor would he invite a discussion on the role of bacteria in the digestive process, so I'm looking very bemused.

Keith notices.  "It's the name of that mountain over there." he tells me.

I refuse to believe it.  "That's the naughty schoolboy snigger-version of the name, right?"

"No, that's the real name."

Yup, seems it used to be called something sane like Mount Wellington or something, but Maori rabble-rousers got onto that and forced the return to the original name.

And it seems this is happening a lot in New Zealand.  Places with perfectly good names like, gosh, the Cook Ranges or something, are being renamed Waipupuonmaititties or other things like make you long to snigger uncontrollably like an entire classroom of naughty schoolboys.

But it isn't just the names which sound like scatological riddles that are so downright silly. Like, let me give you another example:

Many years ago, Keith and I are driving down from Auckland to check out Rotorua when we pick up a young hitchhiker. "Where are you going?" asks Keith.

"I'm off to kick a moo cow." the boy replies.

We're surrounded by so many lush green paddocks with more than enough dairy cows to satisfy even the most voracious animal abuser, so I can't imagine why he'd need to go anywhere to do it, however Keith then asks the question I'm also dying to ask.  "Why kick a moo cow?" to which the boy replies, simply, "Yes!"

And Keith's response to that non sequitur was "We're not going that way but I'll drop you off at the turn-off."

Confusing, right?  I was forced to ask, and I have to say it took a lot to convince me that there was, in all truth, a town in New Zealand called Waikikamukau.

And that's right across the board. Up and down the country there are so many places with such bloody stupid place names I had to ask "Do naughty schoolboys snigger at these names?"

"No. They're considered perfectly reasonable."

"Then what do naughty Kiwi school boys snigger at?"

"We find other stuff."

I don't know how New Zealand manages to constantly do this; to forever come up with names that couldn't be sillier!  Nowhere else in the Pacific manages to do it so thoroughly.  Fiji, for example!  With much the same vocabulary as Maori - since the Maori language is 5000 year old Fijian - we have managed to name places across 365 islands, both large and small, without even a single suggestion of anything snigger-worthy. In fact, when Keith got all miffed at my ridicule and I challenged him to come up with a single stupid Fijian place name he had to think for over an hour before suggesting "Wailoku." which is barely silly at all.

"I think Te Maori is laughing at you." I say to Keith.  "I think they've got a bunch of naughty elders gathered up there in a marai somewhere near Pee Pee Hoo-Ha, who sit around all day coming up with silly place names and laughing hysterically at how they're going to force you Pakeha to adopt them, the ultimate aim being to make you so ashamed of having to go out into the world telling foreigners you come from Waitipakauofa and got your qualification from Aipokapupu University, that all you invader types race back to the UK and beg the queen to allow you to be citizens there again."

"If you continue to mock my country this way," Keith replies "I'm going to secretly buy a house at Waikrapakopaketel and force you to live there for the rest of your life."