PLACE NAMES OF NEW ZEALAND
By A.W.Reed
Revised by Peter Dowling
Trade Paperback
RAUPO – NZ $50

I’m not sure how old a title has to be before it can be fairly deemed a classic but for me this title first published by AH & AW Reed is pretty close to earning that definition. I am so thrilled that Penguin Books has brought AW Reed’s incredibly useful and informative book back into print. Not only back in print but updated and revised by Peter Dowling with no fewer than 1500 entries new to this edition making a total of almost 10,000 place names. Bravo Penguin.

Place Names of New Zealand remains unchallenged as the one-stop reference.
How we call places where we live matters deeply. The debate over whether to include an ‘h’ in the official spelling of ’Wanganui’, which raged as Peter Dowling was revising this book, was merely the latest example of how much people set by the spelling and pronunciation of place names. Times don’t appear to have changed this sentiment. In 1844, residents protested vehemently against the giving of the name Petre to the town that was renamed Wanganui as a result. We care about place names because they crystallise our relationships to the land, to the language and to history. Toponymy, the study of place names, can therefore teach us much about ourselves.

Originally published in 1975, ( I well remember selling it at Beattie & Forbes Bookshop, it was a best-seller for us), Place Names of New Zealand quickly became the standard guide to this popular field. It

    • explains the origin and meaning of the place names (including competing versions)
    • locates places by regions and indicates distances from nearest major localities
    • incorporates place names in both Maori and English, and gives the original Maori names for many places renamed during the colonial period
    • is updated to incorporate latest official names
    • includes an appendix of over 2000 superseded place names

Place Names of New Zealand, prepared with both locals and visitors in mind, is a user-friendly reference work that no library, home, marae or office in New Zealand should be without.

To check it out I looked up Te Hapara, the Gisborne suburb where I spent a large chunk of my childhood, Whitireia, just north of Gisborne near Whangara, and Ngatapa., also near Gisborne and of course they are all there.

About the editor, and original author.
Peter Dowling was born in London in 1965, grew up in Christchurch and graduated with an M.A. (Hons) from the University of Canterbury in 1988. After ten years working in book and magazine publishing in Japan, Europe and Australia, he spent the next ten years with Reed Publishing (NZ), later becoming its publishing manager. In 2002, he edited The Reed Dictionary of New Zealand Place Names.
Now the director of independent publisher Oratia Media, Peter lives in Auckland.

A.W. Reed (Alexander Wyclif) was instrumental in building A.H. & A.W. Reed into New Zealand’s leading publishing house with an enduring list of local books. Reed filled many of the gaps in the book market himself, with a range of reference works and popular accounts of Maori culture. In all, he penned more than 200 books. He died in 1979.