Aotearoa is the current Māori name for New Zealand, and is
also used in New Zealand English. It is unknown whether Māori had a name for
the whole country before the arrival of Europeans, with Aotearoa originally
referring to just the North Island. Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand in 1642 and
called it Staten Landt, supposing it was connected to a landmass of the same
name at the southern tip of South America.
In 1645 Dutch cartographers renamed the land Nova Zeelandia
after the Dutch province of Zeeland. British explorer James Cook subsequently
anglicised the name to New Zealand. Māori had several traditional names for the
two main islands, including Te Ika-a-Māui for the North Island and Te Wai
Pounamu or Te Waka o Aoraki for the South Island. Early European maps labelled
the islands North, Middle and South. In 1830 maps began to use North and South
to distinguish the two largest islands and by 1907 this was the accepted norm.
The New Zealand Geographic Board discovered in 2009 that the
names of the North Island and South Island had never been formalised, but there
are now plans to do so. The board is also considering suitable Māori names,
with Te Ika-a-Māui and Te Wai Pounamu the most likely choices according to the
chairman of the Māori Language Commission.
