Wikipedia:Naming conventions (New Zealand)

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✔ This page documents an English Wikipedia naming convention. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, though it should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

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[edit] Place names in New Zealand

New Zealand placenames are written simply as the place name, unless confusion is likely to occur with duplicated names within the country or outside it.

  1. If a New Zealand place name is unique (or likely to be unique) in the world, then it alone is used as the article's title - (for example, Otorohanga). This form is also used if the New Zealand place is not likely to be confused with places with the same name overseas, by virtue of its relative prominence (for example, Dunedin). Confusion has to be likely, not merely possible: for example, Wellington, the capital, is known all over the world, whereas the other 30 or so places with the same name have fairly local significance only.
  2. If confusion is likely with places outside New Zealand, then the format "Placename, New Zealand" is used, irrespective of the type of location (for example, Mount Hopkins, New Zealand, Avon River, New Zealand).
  3. Since most places in New Zealand have unique names, the standard convention (where it is necessary to distinguish a place in New Zealand from one elsewhere) is simply to use the form "Placename, New Zealand", irrespective of whether the place is a town, river, or whatever. In those rare instances where two places in New Zealand have the same name then the following rules are used:
    • If both places are the same type of place (e.g., both towns), the official regional names are used (for example, Waiau River, Marlborough and Waiau River, Southland) - but see note on urban areas below.
    • If the two places are different types of place, then parentheses are used to disambiguate (for example, "Lake Tekapo" and "Lake Tekapo (town)"). (This convention is not formalised, but is general usage on NZ articles in Wikipedia).
    • If the places are features of specific cities or towns, such as parks or streets, the name of the town or city is used (for example, Stuart Street, Dunedin). Note however that this does not usually apply to suburbs, which are treated in the same way as towns with regard to their naming.

[edit] Māori words

Māori words, when they appear as the title of articles, are usually given with macrons where appropriate, and with a redirect from the unmacronned form. Thus, for example, the article Māori has a redirect at Maori, not the other way round. Except in rare instances - usually explained in the articles - the standard Māori language pluralisation is used (in general, Māori uses the same form for the singular and plural of words). Thus, for example, the article Kiwi (bird) uses the same spelling to refer to singular and plural, whereas the article on Kiwi (people) uses "Kiwis" as the plural and explains this plural usage within the article.

[edit] Place names

Rules of Maori place names are still under discussion, but at present, where the usual name of a place is Maori, macrons are not used in the name. Where the usual name is English but there is also a Maori name, macrons are used in the Maori name. Thus Whakatane is simply Whakatane, but Christchurch is also listed within the article as Ōtautahi. Where the official name of the place includes both English and Maori names the order given by the New Zealand Geographic Board[1] is used (e.g., Aoraki/Mount Cook, Stewart Island/Rakiura, Whakaari/White Island). In the rare instance where a place officially has both Maori and English names and both are used equally, both names are used in the article title, separated by an oblique. The order in which the two names are listed is not fixed, but is often by preponderance of normal usage. A redirect from the alternative order of names is desirable in these cases.

In the infobox of a geographical article, the usual name is given first, followed by the Maori name as follows:

English Name
Māori Name (Māori)

When adding a Māori language name to an infobox, use the Māori Language Commission spellings of Māori names where possible.[1]

An extensive discussion about this is at the New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ See the Māori Language Commission site for a list of placenames, and a map; one of their subsidiary sites has a clearer map.