Homeowners oppose street name chosen by iwi, saying the 17-letter name is too long
3 years ago by z2k_ to c/newzealand
I guess they didn’t want people to end up calling it P Road
What percentage of NZ could actually pronounce it though? It's an absolute mouthful.
Papa-kanga-horo-horo. Eight syllables, pretty straightforward. My Māori is pretty trash, but after one read of it and a handful of times saying it out loud it's pretty simple.
My advice to anyone complaining about it is to just say it out loud a few times. I guarantee that by the time you've said it to the moving company, the power company, the insurance company and your mum, you'll have it locked down.
It also has the added bonus of being completely unique, so there's no chance of your ambulance being dispatched to park terrace on the other side of town while you're choking on park road.
It's definitely a lot easier when you break it up like that.
Yeah, it is much easier when you read it and then say what you read.
Yeah, Māori is actually pretty easy to pronounce if you break it apart. There are only five vowel sounds and they don't change depending on context like with English. The only downside is that names are often comprised of several words smooshed together, so you have to pick it apart yourself the first time you read it.
I don't know man. It would just take a couple of tries to get it and then get used to it like pretty much anything new?
Honestly I've never cared what the name of the street I lived on was or how long it is.
Get over yourself, we can al do Ngāruawāhia well enough cant we?
I'm 50 this coming birthday, had little Te Reo at small white town NZ schools, lived in the UK for 1/3 of my adult life, and would have little issue with that as my street address
I'd wager a very big chunk of the population would misspell it though.
It’s a cool name, but I agree its too long for a street. Would make a good name for a park or a reserve or something in the area. To me an ideal street name is around 2 or 3 syllables. “Acacia” is a pretty crap name too though, better to pick something with a connection to the land and the people.
They mention they’re arranging a hui so hopefully a decent compromise can come from that.
Cool, is this in NZ?
Probably not, unless you like to name your streets in German.
The siblings Scholl were part of the White Rose resistance group in WW2 and were decapitated (aged 21 and 24) for spreading anti war propaganda.
Not really relevant to a discussion about NZ street names then, is it?
It's a valid point that names for subdivisions can be very unoriginal, the worst is the nautical themed ones, there's just so many.
Tree-named streets everywhere.
If the people that live there don't want the name then it should be changed. The council consulted the local iwi and got a stupid name about moving in a crab formation, I'm pretty sure we can swap that out for another name without cultural uproar.
"Residents of a new Whakatāne subdivision have rejected the Māori name chosen by local iwi Ngāti Awa, calling it impractical and too long."
"Under the council’s Road Naming and Property Addressing Policy, the subdivision developer has the responsibility to suggest appropriate names for roads, but consultation with relevant iwi is required."
"In a meeting on August 18, council put forward the motion for approval of the road name “Papakangahorohoro Road”. Council staff wanted to proceed given the area had “huge cultural significance” to Ngati Awa. The motion was supported by mayor Victor Luca."
Please read the article.
PS I have ad an address of lot xxx/yyy, suburb. before a 'proper' address was gazetted.
That name is easy enough. I think people are over-reacting. Karangahape Road is fine and with English names not a single person in Wellington pronounces Majoribanks Street the same way (in fact, here are five streets in Wellington that are commonly mispronounced, all of which are English: https://wellington.govt.nz/...)
Isn't it almost always referred to as K road though?
The fact that people need a "push" to not shorten the name doesn't help your argument much.
Can't call it Acacia Avenue because it's not an Avenue? Fine, call it Acacia Lane. Still has a common vowel sound.
My biggest takeaway from the article was the avenues are supposed to be tree lined. I’m pretty sure there are a bunch of them around that don’t adhere to that naming scheme, although it perhaps depends on the definition of tree lined.
There are tons of roads in the bay of plenty which are harder to spell and pronounce.
It's not the actuall name they have a problem with...
Exactly.
Do we put this thread in the museum? Our first proper instance conflict.
It's a shame we don't have user flairs, I want to make mine "I got Hexbear defederated".
How many of you actually did read the name? It's papakangahorohoro road. That's not toooo hard to remember. I already did. papa-kanga + 2x horo. It's not like it's eyjafjallajökull or something like that.
Or something like Whangaparaoa road clutches pearls.
Also eyjafjallajökull is just fine if you're Icelandic.
Ditto every street name in Wales.
Papakangahorohoro (from memory thank you very much) is easy.
Aberdare
I admit I was making a poorly informed guess about street names in Wales.
Wales came to mind as NZ's currently rolling out bi-lingual road signs. Wales is held up as a model of successful deployment. A certain demographic are unhappy about this.
It's all good. It just made me laugh when I was reading your post, surrounded by streets with names like Brook Street, George Street, Market Street, Wind Street, and Hill Street :D
Oh, and ignore the whiners. Our national park just changed its name from The Brecon Beacons to Bannau Brecheiniog, and I had an English woman telling me that it was discriminatory to a Welsh man she knows who can't speak Welsh...
I mean, you'd get the same reaction if you tried to name a street "eyjafjallajökull St", possibly even more so.
It's certainly possible to learn, but would you really want to be constantly spelling it out?
Believe what you want.
What are those atrocities actually in use as street names somewhere around NZ?
How many of those are street names in NZ?
What a farken mouthful, bugger trying to say that when you need to call an ambulance.
Even somebody like you could manage I bet.
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We can’t have anything cool in this country. We need more street names like this! I for one would be proud to live on the battle crab street.
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