A new policy in Wellington aims to revitalize the indigenous Māori language. First up: giving new, non-colonial names to sites around town.
On a hot weekday in late summer, Wellington’s Civic Square is full of life. Children run around shouting, parents trying to keep up. Students sprawl in the sunshine, while suited businesspeople stride purposefully from one side to the other, deep in conversation. A jogger enters the square, eyes darting, as he seeks a path through the human obstacles in front of him.
Here, in the shadow of Town Hall, at the center of the city’s urban landscape, Wellington’s heart and soul are on show. In recognition of this special area of public space, the square recently acquired a new Māori-inspired name: Te Ngākau. Meaning “the heart,” the name recognizes a place with a key role in bringing the city’s roughly 400,000 residents together.
The new moniker is part of a city policy called Te Tauihu. Adopted in June 2018, the policy aims to promote the indigenous Māori language te reo (“the language”) in a series of steps until it is level with English. (The name of the policy, Te Tauihu, refers to the ornately carved prows of Māori boats, leading the way forward through the waves.) Ultimately, the Wellington City Council hopes to make the city bilingual by 2040.
“I remember years ago, when people were saying, ‘What’s the point of learning te reo Māori?’” Deputy Mayor Jill Day, a central architect of the policy, told CityLab. “We’re showing people what the point is, because it’s going to be everywhere. It’s going to be in your interest to understand enough to be able to function in a community that’s acknowledging a really important part of our heritage.”
In New Zealand, the English names of towns and cities, streets and parks, are mostly imported from Victorian Britain. The capital itself is named after Arthur Wellesley, first duke of Wellington (1769–1852).
Captain James Cook launched Britain’s claim over New Zealand in 1769, a claim that was “formalized” in 1840 with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between the Crown and hundreds of Māori chiefs. A series of land wars then followed between Māori and the rapidly rising number of British settlers, many of whom owned land sold to them illegally, without consultation with the communities living there. (This problem was exacerbated by the two translations of the treaty offering different interpretations of territorial ownership.)
Backed by the might of the British Empire, which committed thousands of troops to suppress Māori resistance, the settlers emerged victorious, and the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw mass immigration from the United Kingdom. Now, more than 70 percent of the population of nearly 5 million are Pākehā (that is, New Zealanders of European descent), while the Māori population has dwindled to below 15 percent.
Although it is technically an official language of New Zealand, fluency in te reo Māori is extremely low; it is spoken by only about 3 percent of the population (English, by comparison, is near-universal). But interest in it does appear to be growing nationwide. Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, one of the country’s newer higher-education centers, reports significant year-on-year increases in numbers of te reo students, while Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has publicly promoted te reo learning, calling for 1 million new speakers by 2040.
While the rise in interest certainly predates Ardern’s election in 2017, her enthusiasm for the language has ensured federal support for this grassroots movement. Ardern has included te reo phrases in multiple high-profile speeches and gave her daughter the middle name Te Aroha, “love.”
For Wellington, Civic Square doubling as Te Ngākau is only the beginning. In consultation with mana whenua, the guardians of Māori culture (as decided by tribal authority and genealogical ancestry), officials are adopting vocabulary from te reo to create new dual place names around the city.
The nearby waterfront was recently christened Ara Moana—“ocean pathway”—acknowledging the vital maritime history of the spac