Aotearoa is the MÃÂori-language name for New Zealand. The name was originally used by MÃÂori in reference only to the North Island, with the whole country sometimes referred to as , especially in the South Island. In the pre-European era, MÃÂori did not have a collective name for the two islands.
Several meanings for Aotearoa have been proposed; the most popular translation usually given is "land of the long white cloud", or variations thereof. This refers to the cloud formations which are believed to have helped early Polynesian navigators find the country in MÃÂori oral tradition.
Beginning in the late 20th century, Aotearoa has become widespread in the bilingual naming of national organisations and institutions. Since the 1990s, it has been customary for particular parties to sing the New Zealand national anthem, "God Defend New Zealand" (or "Aotearoa"), in both MÃÂori and English, which further exposed the name to a wider audience.
New Zealand English speakers pronounce the word with various degrees of approximation to the original MÃÂori pronunciation, from at one end of the spectrum (nativist) to at the other. Pronunciations documented in dictionaries of English include , , and .
The original meaning of is not known. The word can be broken up as: ('cloud', 'dawn', 'daytime' or 'world'), ('white', 'clear' or 'bright') and ('long'). It can also be broken up as , the name of one of the migratory canoes that travelled to New Zealand, and ('long'). The most common literal translation is 'long white cloud', commonly lengthened to 'the land of the long white cloud'. Alternative translations include 'long bright world' or 'land of abiding day', possibly referring to New Zealand having longer summer days in comparison to those further north in the Pacific Ocean.
In some traditional stories, Aotearoa was the name of the canoe () of the explorer Kupe, and he named the land after it. Kupe's wife Kà «rÃÂmarotini (in some versions, his daughter) was watching the horizon and called ('a cloud! a cloud!'). Other versions say the canoe was guided by a long white cloud in the course of the day and by a long bright cloud at night. On arrival, the sign of land to Kupe's crew was the long cloud hanging over it. The cloud caught Kupe's attention and he said "Surely is a point of land". Due to the cloud which greeted them, Kupe named the land Aotearoa.
It is not known when MÃÂori began incorporating the name into their oral lore. Beginning in 1845, George Grey, Governor of New Zealand, spent some years amassing information from MÃÂori regarding their legends and histories. He translated it into English, and in 1855 published a book called Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History of the New Zealand Race. In a reference to MÃÂui, the culture hero, Grey's translation from the MÃÂori reads as follows:
The use of Aotearoa to refer to the whole country is a post-colonial custom. Before the period of contact with Europeans, MÃÂori did not have a commonly used name for the entire New Zealand archipelago. As late as the 1890s the name was used in reference to the North Island () only; an example of this usage appeared in the first issue of Huia Tangata Kotahi, a MÃÂori-language newspaper published on 8 February 1893. It contained the dedication on the front page, "", meaning "This is a publication for the MÃÂori tribes of the North Island and the South Island".
After the adoption of the name New Zealand (anglicised from Nova Zeelandia) by Europeans, one name used by MÃÂori to denote the country as a whole was , a respelling of New Zealand derived from an approximate pronunciation.
The expanded meaning of Aotearoa among PÃÂkehàbecame commonplace in the late 19th century. Aotearoa was used for the name of New Zealand in the 1878 translation of "God Defend New Zealand", by Judge Thomas Henry Smith of the Native Land CourtâÂÂthis translation is widely used today when the anthem is sung in MÃÂori. Additionally, William Pember Reeves used Aotearoa to mean New Zealand in his history of the country published in 1898, The Long White Cloud: Ao Tea Roa.
Since the late 20th century Aotearoa is becoming widespread also in the bilingual names of national organisations, such as the National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna MÃÂtauranga o Aotearoa.
The New Zealand province of the Anglican Church is divided into three cultural streams or (Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia), with the Aotearoa covering MÃÂori-speaking congregations within New Zealand.
In 2015, to celebrate Te Wiki o te Reo MÃÂori (MÃÂori Language Week), the Black Caps (the New Zealand national cricket team) played under the name Aotearoa for their first match against Zimbabwe.
A 2019 petition initiated by Danny Tahau Jobe for a referendum on whether the official name of New Zealand should change to include Aotearoa received 6,310 signatures.
In September 2021, Te PÃÂti MÃÂori started a petition to change the name of New Zealand to Aotearoa. The petition received 50,000 signatures in two days, and over 70,000 by early June 2022. On 2 June, the petition was submitted to Parliament's Petitions Committee. Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi argued that the proposed name change would recognise New Zealand's indigenous heritage and strengthen its identity as a Pacific country. Waititi objected to the idea of a referendum, claiming it would entrench the "tyranny of the majority". National Party leader Christopher Luxon stated that renaming New Zealand was a constitutional issue that would require a referendum. MÃÂori Development Minister Willie Jackson expressed concerns that a potential name change would create branding issues for the country's tourism industry.
A 1NewsâÂÂColmar Brunton poll in September 2021 found that 58% of respondents wanted to keep the name New Zealand, 9% wanted to change the name to Aotearoa, and 31% wanted the joint name of Aotearoa New Zealand. A January 2023 Newshub-Reid Research poll showed a slight increase in support for the name Aotearoa, with 36.2% wanting Aotearoa New Zealand, 9.6% Aotearoa only, and 52% wanting to keep New Zealand only.