Heritage Talk - New Zealand Place Names and Links to Eastern Polynesia

Picture of Maunga Hikurangi, Tairawhiti, New Zealand with an inset of Mehetia Island, Society Islands and a background map of the South East Pacific showing their positions. .

Talk date: 28 June 2023.

Shared place names (toponyms) between two distant, but related societies, point to a common ancestry. A feature of Aotearoa New Zealand is the number of place names common with the ancestral Māori homeland in the Hawaiki zone.

A study of shared place names between Mehetia Island in the Society Islands and New Zealand demonstrates an overwhelming number of names based on a land area index for Mehetia (2.3 km2). With an index of 9.6 for place names derived from the same linguistic root, Mehetia is placed well ahead of any other island or island group in the eastern Pacific.

Recent research has identified the sacred island of Mehetia as a likely departure point for some Polynesian voyagers to New Zealand. This is based on the discovery of three shaped scoria blocks, possibly from that island. Two of the blocks are found in secure contexts in archaeological sites in southern New Zealand.

Mehetia Island is linked to New Zealand by means of five lines of evidence:

  • the island and its peak, Hi'ura'i which was sacred to early Tahitians
  • Tahitian oral traditions that identify that island as a voyaging departure point for New Zealand
  • the occurrence within early New Zealand archaeological sites of shaped scoria blocks which may have originated from this island
  • the significant number of related place names found in New Zealand
  • the extensive occurrence of the name Hikurangi/Hikuraki in New Zealand.

Interestingly, this newly found potential importance of Mehetia as a voyaging point for early Polynesian navigators appears to be poorly reflected in current Māori oral traditions.

Image shows Maunga Hikurangi, Tairawhiti, New Zealand with an inset of Mehetia Island in the Society Islands and a background map of the South East Pacific showing their positions.

Watch the talk on YouTube

Polynesian Place Names and Links to Eastern Polynesia by Ross Ramsay on YouTube

Picture of Dr W Ross Ramsay.

About Dr Ross Ramsay

Ross Ramsay graduated PhD from the University of New England. For this degree he worked in and mapped parts of the Solomon Islands. He has worked in industry, for the Victorian State Government and in academia.

Currently, he is researching, with three colleagues, the origins of 3 shaped scoria blocks carried to New Zealand by early Polynesian navigators.

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