New Zealand City Names
A pet peeve of mine is that we don’t do well in NZ with displaying out history. We have so few statues and history panels around our cities. Take for example, Wellington. We’re named after one of the greatest people in British and military history. But where would you find that around the city? We should have a statue of the Duke of Wellington, explaining we are named after him.
For those interested, I’ve done a table of who or what the 13 major cities in New Zealand are named after. If I have the time, I may extend it to larger towns.
| City | Named After | Fame |
| Auckland | George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland | First Lord of the Admiralty, commissioned Hobson to sail for East Indies |
| Wellingon | Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington | Defeated Napoleon, Field Marshall, UK PM |
| Christchurch | Christ Church, Oxford | A constituent college of Oxford University |
| Hamilton | Captain John Fane Charles Hamilton | Scottish commander of HMS Esk, who was killed in the battle of Gate Pā, Tauranga |
| Dunedin | Dùn Èideann | Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh |
| Tauranga | Maori name for landing place | |
| Lower Hutt | Sir William Hutt | A British Liberal politician who was heavily involved in the colonization of New Zealand and South Australia |
| Palmerston North | Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston | UK PM |
| Napier | Sir Charles James Napier | a general of the British Empire and the British Army‘s Commander-in-Chief in India, notable for conquering Sindh in what is now Pakistan. |
| Porirua | a variant of pari-rua (“two tides”), a reference to the two arms of the Porirua Harbour | |
| Invercargill | Inver comes from the Scottish Gaelic word inbhir meaning a river’s mouth and Cargill is in honour of Captain William Cargill | Founder and Superintendent of Otago |
| Nelson | Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson
|
Admiral, won Battle of Trafalgar |
| Upper Hutt | Sir William Hutt | A British Liberal politician who was heavily involved in the colonization of New Zealand and South Australia |
I knew most of these before I looked them up, but not the Hutt or Invercargill ones.