I guess they didn’t want people to end up calling it P Road
The name – meaning “to move swiftly in battle formation like the crab”
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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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.
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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.
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?).
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
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with the eye’s on it in the media and people like you getting upset over it - I doubt it, unless you/they are deliberately being obtuse
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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’
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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.
Eh Māori stuff is generally reasonably easy to pronounce, I’d say that having to constantly type it out would be a far bigger issue!
what? it’s three different sounds
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.
well it’s a new subdivision that isn’t named yet, the local Iwi were consulted and put forth papakangahorohoro as the traditional name for the land
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“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.
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.
Bah, I’ve been living on “Geschwister-Scholl-Straße” for years and Papakangahorohoro isn’t any more complicated really.
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.
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You may have typed this message out 50x, but I still don’t believe you actually think this.
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What are those atrocities actually in use as street names somewhere around NZ?
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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.
Ditto every street name in Wales.
You should come to Aberdare, most of our street names are simple English words 🙈
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…
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/news-and-events/news-and-information/our-wellington/2021/12/friday-five-street-names-mispronounced)
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.
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Even somebody like you could manage I bet.
Do we put this thread in the museum? Our first proper instance conflict.
