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.
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: …govt.nz/…/friday-five-street-names-mispronounced)
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.
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…
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.
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.
You’ve used three comments in this thread to post reactionary shite about how it’s too hard to learn a new word. I’m here saying that people learn long words all the time, without the same fuss. I don’t think I’m the troll here.
You assholes constantly show up where you’re not wanted, post the most inflammatory takes possible, accuse everyone who disagrees with you of racism, and generally engage in bad faith.
I have done nothing of the sort. I have not accused you of racism nor engaged in bad faith arguments.
In this exchange, I suggested that if you’re capable of learning a longer made up English word, then learning a comparatively shorter te reo Māori word shouldn’t be too challenging.
Mate, it’s not a hard word to learn. I’ve just read it for the first time in my life and I’ve got it down. It’s eight simple syllables, not your life story.
I have to spell my street name 50% of the time, and it’s a perfectly normal English word. The last place I lived had a slightly unusual English word name, and I had to spell it 90% of the time.
Papakangahorohoro doesn’t even look or sound hard. If you want hard, try wrapping your head around figuring out how to pronounce Welsh - Who are the real British people, and not those savage Germans calling themselves “English” -
For example, imagine your touring the village of Llanhyfryddawelllehynafolybarcudprindanfygythiadtrienusyrhafnauole and decided you wanted to catch a train to Liverpool but on your way there you accidentally take the wrong train and end up in Fairbourne at Gorsafawddachaidraigodanheddogleddollonpenrhynareurdraethceredigion rail station. Makes for a great photo opportunity at least.
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
That is a spectacularly out of touch comment to be honest, not everyone spends hours reading the news and arguing about it with strangers on the Internet, you know.
oh my god - just give up. Its not that hard a name to spell when we have places like Foveaux Strait, Balmacewen, Corstorphine just to name a few non Te Reo name that are ‘hard to spell’ or are a ‘mouthful’
Those are also a mouthful, and are probably a hassle for the people that live there. I don’t see how that makes creating a headache for these people acceptable?
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.
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.
If I can say shmutzfangmatten then I can say Papakangahorohoro. I bet half the people complaining wouldn’t be if they were trying to name it for a (hypothetical) historical German doormat factory instead of giving it a perfectly cromulent Maori name (I think something to do with earthquakes?).
I definitely couldn’t pronounce shmutzfangmatten though, and I doubt most of NZ could either. I also think there would be a similar push back if you tried to name a street that.
No problems with the racist epithets bring dropped previously though, right? Bad faith gets met with bad faith, in my book, pathetic trolling with equal, but opposite, pathetic trolling
In what way is calling a street in NZ by an Indigenous name in any way equivalent to the violent dispossession of life and land wrought by colonisation. You’re right, you’re pathetic.
The people we call natives today displaced other peoples before them, and so back to the dawn of time. In any case, the racist epithet I was referring to was ‘crakka’, as you conveniently ignored.
Having long street names in another country is irrelevant because this is an nz community. No one is going to say oh I guess they named a street flebeflabflopper in Denmark so that makes these peoples complaints null and void.
There’s plenty of maori street names so that’s not the issue here.
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