Wanganui and Whanganui: A Clash of Identities

• Autores: Philip W. Matthews
• Localización: Onoma: Journal of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences, ISSN 0078-463X, Nº. 46, 2011 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Names and minorities), págs. 167-208
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The issue of whether the name of a New Zealand city and district should be spelled 'Wanganui' or 'Whanganui' has been intermittently controversial over the last hundred years or so. In 2008, a newspaper, the New Zealand Herald, set up a forum «Should it be �Wanganui� or �Whanganui�?» which, over the seventeen months from May 13 2008 to October 27 2009, received 1036 comments on the issue. The issue became more pressing when, in February 2009, a Maori organization made a submission to the New Zealand Geographic Board seeking a change in the name of a city and its district to 'Whanganui', a Maori word, while a counter submission was made in August 2009 by a local government authority, claiming that Wanganui was not a Maori but was an English word and hence should not be changed. This paper focuses on the ways in which a sample of 345 comments were positioned in relation to Wanganui and Whanganui and, more particularly, to the two identities, Maori and Pakeha, underlying the issue.