The official body that Parliament has put in charge of assigning placenames in New Zealand is the New Zealand Geographic Board, which is governed under Parliament by the New Geographic Board Act 2008.
Section 8 of that Act says this (emphasis added in subsection 3):
Jurisdiction and powers of Board
8Extent of Board’s jurisdiction
(1)
The Board has jurisdiction to exercise its powers and to carry out its functions and duties under this Act or any other enactment in relation to geographic features and Crown protected areas within—
(a)
the territorial limits of New Zealand; and
(b)
the continental shelf, as defined in section 2(1) of the Continental Shelf Act 1964; and
(c)
the Ross Dependency, as defined in section 7(1) of the Antarctica (Environmental Protection) Act 1994.
(2)
In addition, the Board may exercise its powers and carry out its functions and duties under this Act, as far as they are relevant, in relation to those parts of Antarctica outside the Ross Dependency.
(3)
However, the Board does not have jurisdiction to assign a name to, or alter the name of, New Zealand.
Therefore all the people led by PC activists in the media who are trying to change the name of our country from New Zealand to Aotearoa or to Aotearoa New Zealand are taking to themselves a false power, an unlawful power, a power that Parliament has given no one, and which it has even explicitly denied the Geographic Board.
Aotearoa, 'Land of the Long White Cloud', is not an apt name for the country, unlike New Zealand. Aotearoa is claimed to be the name that Kupe gave the country when he discovered it long ago. But if he had arrived on a cloudless day he would have given it a different name. And how much of the country can be seen from a canoe low in the water? Not much.
But 'New Zealand' is very apt. Perfectly apt. It is James Cook's anglicisation of 'Nova Zeelandia', which Dutch cartographers named it in 1645 after the Dutch province of Zeelandia, in honour of the fact that Abel Tasman was the first European to sight the country in 1642. Other countries still call it Nova Zelandia--such as Bulgaria.
Nothing could be more apt than 'New Zealand.' It was a land new to human discovery, by any race; it rose from the sea tens of millions of years ago; it is surrounded by the sea; everyone who lives here is not far from the sea; and seaside and seaborne activities are embedded deep in New Zealand culture.
Its rhythm fits perfectly the rhythm of English; the emphasis falls on the Zea, the second of its short three syllables. But Aotearoa does not; it has fairly even emphasis on five syllables, which does not fit into English sentences. It fits perfectly the rhythm of Maori, just as Nova Zelandia fits perfectly the rhythm of Bulgarian.
The abbreviation, NZ, cannot be confused with anything else, and is known the world over, as is the three-letter version, NZL.
What could be the abbreviations of Aotearoa? AO? AOT? ATR? AT? ANZ (like the bank)? Forcing that upon the world would be waste of time and money.
The argument is very silly, started by silly dictatorial people who have invented a PC position, who want ram it down everyone's throats, and who choose to be offended by anyone who does not agree with their nonsense.
According to the Department of Statistics 50,000 people of New Zealand's five million population speak Maori. That is one in a hundred. 1% want to dictate to five million and to the 7.5 billion in the world.
No. This country is called New Zealand. Period.
