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.
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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What percentage of NZ could actually pronounce it though? It's an absolute mouthful.
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.
It's definitely a lot easier when you break it up like that.
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.
Kinda a ridiculous hypothetical to be honest.
Yeah, it is much easier when you read it and then say what you read.
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
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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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.
Cool, is this in NZ?
Probably not, unless you like to name your streets in German.
The siblings Scholl were part of the White Rose resistance group in WW2 and were decapitated (aged 21 and 24) for spreading anti war propaganda.
Not really relevant to a discussion about NZ street names then, is it?
It's a valid point that names for subdivisions can be very unoriginal, the worst is the nautical themed ones, there's just so many.
Having lived in Gulf Harbour I totally agree
Tree-named streets everywhere.
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
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)
Isn't it almost always referred to as K road though?
Not really, there's been a push for people to use its full name and last time I was in Auckland everyone I spoke to did.
The fact that people need a "push" to not shorten the name doesn't help your argument much.
Can't call it Acacia Avenue because it's not an Avenue? Fine, call it Acacia Lane. Still has a common vowel sound.
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.
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.
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...
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There are tons of roads in the bay of plenty which are harder to spell and pronounce.
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Do we put this thread in the museum? Our first proper instance conflict.
It's a shame we don't have user flairs, I want to make mine "I got Hexbear defederated".