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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?

MountainBridgeForestLake

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

CliffIslandCaveValley

3. What does Rotorua's name mean?

Long harbourRed earthBoiling waterSecond lake

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

A field of flowersA deep lakeA long stretch of gravel along the Waikato RiverA steep cliff

5. Despite its English name, roughly how long is Ninety Mile Beach?

About 145 kilometresAbout 500 kilometresAbout 88 kilometresAbout 9 kilometres

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

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

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

WhakatūRakiuraPiopiotahiTe Moeka o Tuawe

8. What does the presence of both an English and a Māori name on an official map, such as Aoraki / Mount Cook, usually signal?

Formal recognition that the place carries two histories, side by sideThat the two names are simply spelling variants of each otherThat the Māori name is only temporaryThat mapmakers made an error

9. Which organisation is officially responsible for approving dual and alternative place names in New Zealand?

The Waitangi TribunalThe New Zealand Geographic BoardThe Department of Conservation, acting aloneThe Reserve Bank of New Zealand

10. A place carrying two names, such as Rakiura and Stewart Island, is best understood as what?

A sign that the Māori name is less accurateTwo histories of the same place, standing alongside each other, not competing to be the one true nameProof that one name must eventually be droppedEvidence the place was named twice by mistake

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