Click here to hear Peter Dowling, Libro International publisher, discussing place names on Radio New Zealand National's Summer Report programme. Peter is the revising editor of A.W. Reed's classic Place Names of New Zealand.
Showing posts with label Place Names of New Zealand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Place Names of New Zealand. Show all posts
Monday, February 7, 2011
Monday, December 27, 2010
Place Names of New Zealand on air
Radio New Zealand National starts tomorrow broadcasting sessions with Peter discussing interesting place names. Listen out for the sessions on Summer Report, at around 7.50 am every Tuesday and Thursday from 28 December through to 20 January. Drawing from his work as revising editor of A.W. Reed's Place Names of New Zealand, Peter talks with Simon Morton and Rowan Quinn about current naming controversy, women namers, names brought from Hawaiki and more.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Place Names of New Zealand on Radio Live
is out this month from Penguin Books.
Peter spoke with Radio Live host Graeme Hill
about the book and how the meanings of place names
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Place Names of New Zealand - out now
Place Names of New Zealand
A.W. Reed; revised by Peter Dowling
Published by Raupo, an imprint of Penguin Books (www.penguin.co.nz)
ISBN 8-978-0-14-320410-7 512 pages Paperback NZ$50
It’s been a privilege to edit, update and expand A.W. Reed’s Place Names of New Zealand. The new edition is just out through Raupo, the imprint that carries on what was once Reed Books.
How we call places matters deeply. The debate over whether to include an ‘h’ in the official spelling of ‘Wanganui’, which raged as I was revising this work between 2008 and 2010, was merely the latest example of what store people set by place names. Times don’t appear to have changed this sentiment. In 1844, residents protested vehemently against the giving of the name Petre to the town that was renamed Wanganui as a result.
A.W. Reed, who died in 1979, was an outstanding publisher who had a feel for what matters in popular culture, and he recognised the need to start recording origin and meaning of place names before the knowledge was lost. His Place Names of New Zealand, published in 1975, became the standard guide to this popular field, and he published a substantial Supplement to Place Names of New Zealand shortly before his death.
The 2010 Place Names of New Zealand maintains most of Reed’s research, but in a slimmed down, ready-reference structure. Onto that foundation I’ve built on as much new information as could be reliably sourced within the available time – adding definitions for some 1500 new names, new details for existing entries, and latest versions of official names. All up the new edition has origin and meanings for over 10,000 place names.
What excites me about place names is how directly they mediate between us and our land, our past and our language, keeping alive experiences and people long vanished from our memories. There are names that mark lovers, murderers, cannibal feasts, failures, puns and friendships; names that tie places to nature alongside those that honour eminences who never had anything to do with the place; names that have been misspelled but where any change is deeply opposed.
Arthur’s Pass, for example, retains its apostrophe only because residents protested violently at government efforts to remove it (Hawke’s Bay is the only other New Zealand place name officially to retain the apostrophe). It could have been worse for residents of the Pass – in Southland the Ruhtra Creek was meant to honour a surveyor by the name of Arthur, but ended up being recorded backwards!
I hope that readers can gain as much from Place Names of New Zealand as it gave me in putting it together.
Peter Dowling - peter@oratiamedia.com
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Place Names of New Zealand on National Radio
Peter Dowling is currently preparing Place Names of New Zealand, A.W. Reed's authoritative work on the subject, for a new edition in 2010. Fully updated, with condensed, easy-reference entries and over 1500 newly added names, it takes Reed's work into the 21st century.
On weekdays from 28 December 2009 to 22 January 2010, Peter will be talking place names on Radio New Zealand National's morning show, Summer Report. Check http://www.radionz.co.nz/listen/amfm for where to tune in, and visit http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/summerreport for details.
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