Do we need a campaign in Paekākāriki to rename Pingau Street?
What is a pingau? Is it a plant? A mythical creature? Or a misspelt Māori name?
In 1929, the Evening Post (5 October) advertised a new ‘extension’ in Paekākāriki:
LOTS 8, 9, and 10 of Extension No. v, Paekakariki, having frontage to Pingau street. These sections are handy to the beach, i.e. within two or three minutes of the golf- links, and anyone contemplating a seaside bach or home should not miss this opportunity of inspecting these sections.
A search of various botanical sites and other archives suggests pingau is most likely to be a misspelling of pīngao, a sand grass native to New Zealand. This misnomer was first formally identified in The Streets of Paekākāriki, a booklet published in 2018. The street name project involved a joint research effort by the since disbanded Paekākāriki History Group and was compiled by local historian Michael O’Leary. Members of the group each chose a Paekākāriki street that piqued their curiosity or was close to their heart to research. I picked Pingau Street, living close to where that winding, hilly, one-way street (Paekākāriki’s only one way street) joins The Parade.
By then, I had become intrigued by the back story of the street’s most famous inhabitant: Captain Val Sanderson. One of New Zealand’s most well-known conservationists and the founder, and later President, of the Native Bird Protection Society (later, Forest & Bird), Sanderson lived at 15 Pingau Street from 1929 until his death in 1945. Here, he built a cottage and established a native forest on a bare sand dune: a feat which most people doubted could be successful. I ended up writing two accounts of his contentious back story involving murder and wife desertion.
Yet it struck me as ironic that one of New Zealand’s greatest and most controversial conservationists should end his days in a street with an incorrect Māori name. Surely, Pingau Street, sitting atop a sand dune, was named after our native pīngao?
What is Pīngao?
Pīngao (pikao) is a grass-like New Zealand native from the sedge family, growing 30–90 cm tall on sand dunes and now endangered. Its golden colour distinguishes it from other dune plants, and its role as a sand binder is crucial to prevent dune erosion. With its golden hue pīngao is easily distinguished from other dune species such as the introduced spinifex or marram grass. Known in Māori as ngā tukemata o Tāne (‘Tāne’s eyebrows’), pīngao is highly prized for weaving because it does not need dye.
Pīngao first came to the attention of Western botanists through collections from several locations in the eastern North Island taken by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander during James Cook’s first expedition to New Zealand in 1769-1770. Banks and Solander proposed to call this distinctive sedge Scirpus frondosus, but failed to formally publish the name. It was the French, under Dumont d’Urville, who officially ‘recognised’ the species in 1832 when botanist and illustrator Achille Richard described pīngao as Isolepis spiralis. But in 1853 English botanist Joseph Hooker proposed the name Desmoschoenus for the species. Then in 2010 researchers merged Desmoschoenus into the larger mostly South African Ficinia group; with pīngao now officially known as Ficinia spiralis.
Turning to street names, it is only in recent decades that these have been standardised. In the early colonial period, place and street names tended to be British –note the many Queen or Victoria streets across the land. But in 1924 the government established the Honorary Geographic Board of New Zealand to standardise place names, although local councils continued to determine street-level naming.
By the 1920s Māori names began to be used for new suburbs and sometimes streets. But these were usually decided by town planners and local councils, often with limited knowledge of te reo or botanical terms; pre-Internet, references were also harder to check. A clutch of recurring Māori street names referenced birds or trees: tūī, kākā, korimako and kererū, kōwhai and tōtara, tītoki, karamū, karaka and mataī. But less common names, like pīngao, were often misspelt, shortened, or anglicised. In the 1920s when Pingau Street was developed, Pakeha street namers, challenged by Māori vowel pronunciation, likely misheard the word pīngao as pingau; while also failing to check botanical sources.
A search of Papers Past shows other instances where, pre-1929, pīngao is spelt as pingau. One can be found in a 1925 article about marram grass and lupins on Harbour Board land. Another is in a 1904 New Zealand Herald series entitled Where the white man treads. This attempt to reconstruct the world view of Māori pre-colonisation is a deeply lyrical portrayal, as illustrated in this snippet referencing ‘pingau’:
White seahorse sandhills, representing the accumulated deaths of ages of pipi, pupu, kuku, and other molluscs, mingled with disintegrated mountain and volcanic quartz–which the sea, having no further use for, amused itself by grinding into grains, and casting shoreward, for its mate, the wind, to pick up and play with, to pile into hillocks, until the wily pingau (native sand grass), creeping snakelike along, took charge of, and bound into masses; behind which other wind-tossed seeds found shelter and moisture and thus continued the growth of the mainland. (New Zealand Herald, Vol. XLI, Iss. 12484, 30 January 1904).
But was Val Sanderson aware that his street was misnamed? I suspect so – Aotearoa’s distinctive flora and fauna were his central concern. And prior to purchasing his Pingau Street plot, he had arranged for some of the Society’s material to be translated into te reo, including by renowned ethnographer Elsdon Best.
Notably, before the naming of Paekākāriki‘s Pingau Street, there were no other streets called Pīngao or Pingau. Now there is a Pingao Lane in Peka Peka and a Pingao Drive in Whanganui. There may be others elsewhere.
Paekākāriki’s Haumia Street: A Precedent for Name Change
The misspelling of Pingau Street was not unusual for the times. Prior to the standardisation of street names in the 1980s, Māori names were often misspelt. In fact, Paekākāriki’s most historically and culturally significant road, Haumia Street – named after Ngāti Haumia, the mana whenua of the Paekākāriki area and hapū of the local iwi, Ngāti Toa Rangatira – was misspelt for decades.
When the northern end of Paekākāriki was developed in the late 1950s (the ‘Awatea block’), the street was incorrectly gazetted and signposted as Haumai Street. It was only in the late 1980s, after a long campaign by local iwi and residents to have the spelling fixed to honour the correct ancestor and hapū name, that it was changed to its rightful name. However early land titles, council planning maps, historical records and government archives from the mid-20th century continue to carry the ‘Haumai’ spelling.
Should there be a campaign in Paekākāriki to change Pingau Street to Pīngao Street to reflect the proper spelling of Aotearoa’s native golden plant, and to honour the legacy of its most famous inhabitant, environmentalist Val Sanderson? If so, let’s also consider renaming some other streets that have little specific meaning to our village, such as Wellington Road and The Parade, among others. Or should Paekākāriki maintain this uniquely named stretch of road: Pingau Street, the only one in the country, in fact, the world?
