Naming NZ: Forgotten Place Names

This was originally posted as a thread on our X account.

1. Petone, formerly Britannia.

The New Zealand Company settlement of Britannia existed briefly in 1840 on the site of what is now the suburb of Petone in Lower Hutt.

Flooding from the Hutt River made settlement difficult for the colonists and they abandoned it in favour of Thorndon within the year.

Britannia Street remains the only reminder of its existence in Petone.

2. Picton, formerly Horne Bay.

The town of Picton has known many names. Its first European name was Horne Bay, granted by Captain William Steine aboard the barque William IV in 1832 after the ship’s owners.

The area was then changed to Newton Bay in 1847, and names such as Cromwell and Beaconsfield were commonly used among settlers.

The final name of Picton, after Sir Thomas Picton who was a British commander during the Napoleonic Wars, was granted in 1859 by Governor Sir Thomas Gore Browne.

3. Inchclutha, formerly Bloody Jack’s Island.

A small island in the Clutha River, it was once locally known as Bloody Jack’s Island after ‘Bloody Jack’ Tuhawaiki, a renowned Maori chief of Ngai Tahu.

Tuhawaiki gained his nickname through the red coats he and his men wore that were purchased from British soldiers stationed in Australia.

Although Tuhawaiki himself was based further south, Inchclutha was originally named Bloody Jack’s Island as it was the place of his birth. The name then fell out of favour after his death in 1844.

4. Bluff Harbour, formerly Port Macquarie.

Bluff Harbour at Bluff, Southland, was first named Port Macquarie after the governor of New South Wales by Sydney shipowner Robert Jones.

Jones had visited the area in hopes of establishing a flax milling industry, although a conflicting story has another merchant - Robert Murray - as the original namer in 1813 which was then confirmed by Jones.

Bluff Harbour was also once known as Bloomfield Harbour after William and Richard Bloomfield, both Sydney merchants, who arrived in 1840 intending to purchase Maori land in the area.

5. Raglan Range, formerly Bounds of Hades.

Although not much is known about the former name, the fact that the range was locally referred to as the realm of the Greek god of the dead and the underworld is enough to spur the imagination.

The official name was bestowed by W.T.L Travers after Lord Raglan.

6. Lower Hutt, formerly Aglionby.

The settlement from which Lower Hutt and Hutt City grew was first named Aglionby after Henry Aglionby, a director of the New Zealand Company.

When Edward Wakefield travelled up the Hutt River - named after Sir William Hutt - he referred to the locality as “up the Hutt” with Aglionby referred to as the “Lower Hutt” by surveyors.

As Hutt City expanded, Aglionby was slowly absorbed into the city and by 1910 the area was referred to by nothing else than Lower Hutt. This was the fate of similar settlements around NZ.

7. Kingston, formerly St Johns.

This small Otago town was originally named St Johns, not after the apostle but St John Branigan, Otago’s commissioner of police during the gold rush era.

The town’s name was briefly Georgetown before finally landing on Kingston, after a place in Ireland as well as in association with Queenstown on the lake.