It is doubtful whether in prehistoric times the New Zealand Maori had a general name for the North Island, South Island, and contiguous coastal islands of New Zealand. An old Maori of Queen Charlotte Sound at the time of Cook's first visit in 1770 used a name rendered phonetically by Cook as “Aeheino mouwe” while pointing to the North Island, and a name rendered by Cook as “Tovy-poenammu” for two lands south of Cook Strait, probably derived from “te wai pounamu”, meaning literally “the water greenstone”, the greenstone of the South Island being valued and sought by the Maoris of the North as well as of the South Island. Indirect evidence that some Maoris of Cook's time used the name Aotea for a substantial portion of the North Island is given by J. Andia y Varela, the captain of one of the ships of a Spanish expedition which visited Tahiti at about the time of Cook's second voyage in the Pacific. In the years 1773–74 Cook, accompanied by two Tahitians, made a round trip in the course of which he visited Tongatabu, in the Tonga Group, New Zealand, and Vaitahu, in the Marquesas Group. Shortly after Cook's departure from Tahiti, where he left one of the Tahitians who had accompanied him on this round trip, Andia gathered the names of a number of islands known to the Tahitians, including “Tonetapu”, “Guaytaho”, “Ponamu”, and “Iaotea”. The first three of these names echo Tongatabu, Vaitahu, and “Tovy-poenammu”. The fourth is evidently the name Aotea. In 1773–74 Cook had followed the south-east coast of the North Island and had visited Queen Charlotte Sound. The name Aotea may have been obtained either at that time or on Cook's first voyage, when his expedition had contacts with numbers of Maoris on the east coast of the North Island and at Queen Charlotte Sound. The fact that both Ponamu, echoing Cook's “Tovy-poenammu” as a name for part or all of the South Island, and Iaotea appear in Andia's list creates the presumption that the name Aotea had been obtained in the North Island. In the mid-nineteenth century Sir George Grey collected Maori traditions in which Aotea is given as the destination of Maori traditional canoes in terms implying that the name embraced at least a considerable portion of the North Island. The name Aotearoa also appears in Grey's collection. In a version of the tradition of Kupe's discovery of New Zealand given late in the nineteenth century by the Maori priest Te Matorohanga, Kupe was described as naming his discovery “Aotearoa” (q.v.). This name was translated by S. Percy Smith as “long white cloud”. Henry Williams, however, commented that the name “Aotearoa” was incomprehensible to some nineteenth-century Maoris to whom it was given by Te Matorohanga, and that the words “long white cloud” were not an equivalent. It is possible that the components of “Aotea”, whatever their original meaning, had lost this meaning when “roa”, signifying “long”, was tacked on, in which case Aotearoa would mean simply “Long Aotea”. A general Maori name for the main islands of New Zealand was no doubt essential in later times, and continues so today. Aotearoa fills the need.
Coming to European names for New Zealand, when Jacob Le Maire in 1616 discovered Le Maire Strait, he and his companions had no idea of the extent of the land on the south side of the strait. They called it Staten Land, a name which still endures for the small portion of land separated from the rest of South America by Le Maire Strait. In 1642–43, when Abel Janszoon Tasman sailed along part of the western littoral of New Zealand, he conjectured that it might be joined to Le Maire's Staten Land and accordingly named it Staten Landt. In 1643 Hendrik Brouwer skirted Le Maire's Staten Land on the south side. Any discerning geographer who knew of this might be expected to deduce that Le Maire's Staten Land was not a continent and that Tasman's Staten Landt did not join it. In 1644 Tasman sailed along the north coast of Australia. In the same year the Dutch authorities at Batavia had a composite map compiled; it is now in the Mitchell Library, Sydney. It shows large portions of Australia known from Dutch discoveries, including those of Tasman on the Tasmanian and continental north coast. “Compagnis Niev Nederland” occurs in this map in large letters within the Australian continent. The name means “Company's New Netherland”, the “Company” being the Dutch East India Company. Later, “Nieuw Holland”, meaning New Holland, became a standard Dutch appellation for the Australian continent, and the English translation, or its Latin equivalent, in due course appeared in the texts of British explorers and geographers. On a Dutch globe-map of the mid-seventeenth century, the name “Zeelandia Nova” – the Latin equivalent of the Dutch “Nieuw Zeeland” and the English “New Zealand” – appears for the parts of New Zealand discovered by Tasman. Zeeland is a Dutch maritime province. We may see in these facts the emergence of the designation Nieuw Zeeland and in due course of its English equivalent as a name replacing the unsatisfactory Staten Land and bestowed on New Zealand by analogy with the name Nieuw Holland for Australia.
by Charles Andrew Sharp, B.A.(OXON.), M.A.(N.Z.), Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.