The Naming of New Zealand
By Willy Trolove
Tue 20 January 2004
First published in the New Zealand Herald
Chile. Now there's a name. Think Chile and you think mountains, alpacas and rugby players that eat each other.
Think Chile and you think snow, glaciers and southerlies so cold that you can smell the penguin farts. Oh yes, Chile is chilly all right. Whoever named Chile knew what he was doing.
Then there's Iceland. You know where you stand with Iceland. Land of ice. Sure, it might have Vikings and geysers in the middle of the golf course and a fondness for harpooning unarmed whales, but if you want to sum up the place in a word then look no further than its name.
A friend of mine has an Icelandic girlfriend. As well as looking like the best bits of Helena Christensen, Bjork and the curvier half of Abba all rolled into one, she rings him every time there's a heat wave in Reykjavik.
"Hell, James," she screeches down the transatlantic cable in her heaving Icelandic accent, "it’s so hot here. Eleven degrees and we’re melting. We're all in the park sunbathing with our tops off."
Yes, Iceland is cold. And you don't need a topless Icelandic girlfriend to tell you that. It's in the name.
Look at Norway. It's the way to the North. Nice. No confusion there. Not like, say, France, which could be the way to anywhere.
But it doesn't stop with the cold countries. South Africa might have been named by the same unimaginative fellow who gave the world Cape Town (it's a town, at the cape), but at least you know where you are when you're in South Africa.
Just like the United States of America, which, no matter how you look at it, are the united states of America. The country is described by its name. It's not called Australia or Bangladesh or Nutbarland. These American states are united. Get out of our way.
Ecuador is Spanish for the Equator, which slices through the place like a Caesarean section. China is named after its ceramic ware.
The Canary Islands are full of canaries, and, by the same logic, the Virgin Islands are full of, well, Virginians.
But things get a bit murky after that. Ivory Coast was once known for its ivory but isn't any more. Hungary might be appropriate when there's a famine on. And it makes sense to be Russian when you're in a hurry.
But there are hardly any turkeys in Turkey. Greece is famous for an oil rather than a grease. And Chad is named after a large American in a pickup truck, which doesn't give us any clues about the place.
In fact, most countries have names that are baffling to anyone who isn't a history graduate.
Switzerland, land of the Switzers? Brazil, part breast-supporting apparatus and part Soviet limousine? How about Singapore? Mauritania? Canada? All of them seem as meaningless as each other.
Then there are the names that are just wrong. Greenland isn't very green. It has more ice than Iceland but, I guess, when you're trying to attract migrants you don't want to advertise the fact that your island is one of the world's coldest places, the winter days are 10 minutes long, and you'll only get by if you can spear your own walrus.
Finally, there is New Zealand, the most inappropriately named country of all.
In 1642, when Abel Tasman spied the long rugged backbone of the South Island, he declared it to be a "groot hooch verheven landt", a great spot to make hooch, or - more correctly - a great land uplifted high.
Some bored Dutch mapmaker then thought, "I know, let's name this new land after the most low-lying, flood-prone, boggy spot in all of Europe".
And so New Zealand, soaring, majestic and mountainous, is named after the Dutch province at the mouth of the Maas and Rhine rivers called Zeeland, which spends much of its time below sea level.
Quite clearly we have to do something about this.
It makes no sense that New Zealand shares its identity with a land of windmills, waterlogged tulips and people who fret about their dykes. We must change our country's name.
That's easy, I hear you say. We already have another name, and adopting it would make us feel a whole lot better about taking the beaches away from the Maori.
Maybe. Aotearoa is okay at first glance, but when you're trying to market New Zealand as a tourist destination, the land of the long white cloud won't get you far. Tourists don't travel all the way around the world for overcast weather.
No. Abel's name is better. Let's rename this great little country the Land Uplifted High. It's inspiring. It's descriptive. It tells the world what we want to be.
And it's even better than Chile.
