The name is frequently used in an official capacity across the country, which has renewed debate on the acceptance of the Maori language.
According to The New York Times, The connection between New Zealand, the Pacific archipelago east of Australia, and Zeeland, the windmill-flecked Dutch province from which it takes its name, seems tenuous. That’s because it is.
Not even a perceived likeness connects the two places. In late 1642, the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman caught sight of the northwest coast of New Zealand’s South Island from his ship. He referred to it as Staten Landt, thinking it might be the western extremity of an Argentine island already christened by one of his compatriots.
“When late in 1643 this was perceived to be impossible,” as the New Zealand historian Michael King wrote in his history of the country, “an anonymous cartographer in the Dutch East India Company” renamed the line of coast “Nieuw Zeeland” or, in Latin, “Zelandia Nova,” for Zeeland, a western province of the Netherlands. This, Dr. King explained, was intended as a companion name for “Hollandia Nova” or “New Holland,” as Australia was then known.
Nearly four centuries later, Australia has long since shaken its Dutch moniker. But “New Zealand” lives on — for now.
Te Paati Maori is a political party that aims to represent the interests of New Zealand’s Indigenous people. In June, its two members of Parliament presented a petition with 70,000 signatures to the New Zealand Parliament that called on it to “change the country’s official name to Aotearoa” and restore the original Maori names to all of its settlements and other places.
“People are hungry for change,” said Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, the party’s co-leader, at the time of submission. She added: “There is a new generation of tangata whenua” — a common expression for the Indigenous people of New Zealand — “who want to see themselves reflected in our country’s identity, who recognize that the status quo is no longer consistent with who we are as a nation.”
