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🗺️ Places and Names of Aotearoa

Years 6 to 10 · Read up first

10 questions. Get 8 right to earn 10 minutes. All 10 right = +5 bonus. They start easy and get harder as you go, so treat the first few as a warm-up. Every one you miss comes back with the answer and why.

1. What does 'roto' mean, as in Rotorua or Rotoiti?

BridgeLakeMountainForest

2. What does 'awa' mean in a Māori place name?

PathRiverLakeBeach

3. What is Hamilton's Māori name, Kirikiriroa, said to describe?

A steep cliffA field of flowersA long stretch of gravel along the Waikato RiverA deep lake

4. What does Ngāmotu, the Māori name for the area around New Plymouth, mean?

The islandsThe forestThe mountainThe harbour

5. What is the Māori name for Stewart Island, New Zealand's third largest island?

MotutapuKapitiRakiuraRangitoto

6. In Rotorua's fuller traditional name, Te Rotorua nui a Kahumatamomoe, what does 'nui' generally add?

A number, always meaning 'two'A sense of size or greatness, roughly 'big' or 'great'A direction, usually 'north'A colour, usually red

7. Fox Glacier, in Westland, carries which Māori name?

Te Moeka o TuawePiopiotahiWhakatūRakiura

8. What does the dual naming of places like Mount Aspiring, also called Tititea, generally reflect?

That one of the two names must be wrongThat English names always came firstThat mountains never had Māori names before Europeans arrivedThat a landscape can carry more than one name and more than one history, both worth knowing

9. What is one reason a place might have gained an official dual name only in recent decades, rather than much earlier?

Because English names were made illegalBecause dual names have always existed since 1840Because Māori names were invented only in the 1990sBecause Treaty settlements and changing official policy have progressively restored Māori names since the 1990s

10. Why do some New Zealand place names combine a Māori element with an ancestor's name rather than a plain landscape description, such as Te Whanganui a Tara?

Because the name ties the landscape to a specific person or story remembered in that community's historyBecause landscape features could not legally be namedBecause ancestor names were required by law for every placeBecause it made the name easier to translate into English

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