Shanti Mathias scrolls through council archives and Papers Past to discover where street names come from.
In Sydenham, a suburb south of Christchurch’s CBD, there are some familiar names on the road signs. Milton Street. Coleridge Street. Wordsworth Street, which, naturally branches into Shakespeare Road. There’s Tennyson Street, of course, and Shelley Street.
Walking around, or even just looking at a map of the area gives me vivid flashbacks to first year English literature papers at uni. Am I trying to get to Yogiji’s Indian Food Store on 32 Wordsworth Street or frantically highlighting “I gazed—and gazed—but little thought” in the hope that having lots of colours on the page will help me understand poems? Am I taking a wrong turn from Longfellow Street onto Tennyson Street or agonising about submitting an essay with a comma in the wrong place in “Alfred Lord, Tennyson” [sic]?
Once you notice a theme in street names, it’s impossible not to spot more and more of them. James K Baxter Place is clearly named for the poet. But are Manhire Street and Mansfield Street also named after Bill and Katherine respectively, increasing the representation of New Zealand writers among dusty British figures?
Not so, unfortunately. According to Christchurch City Council’s comprehensive street names origin resource, Manhire Street is named for Bethel Prinn Manhire, a paperhanger and glazier who was also mayor of Sydenham. Mansfield Street, meanwhile, is named for Kate Mansfield Peacock, the wife of John Hickman, MP for Lyttelton from 1868-1873.
Many of Sydenham and Addington’s themed streets were given their names from the 1870s onwards, when Sydenham was established as a borough and the first University of Canterbury students were being assigned Wordsworth et al for their English essays. An article from Christchurch’s Star newspaper in 1909 records a mass renaming of streets in Christchurch to prevent confusion. Within the central Christchurch area, there were “three Church streets, a Church road, a Church lane and a Church square”. There were also lots of duplicate names, where streets in the central city had the same titles as thoroughfares in newer suburbs, so a mass renaming was approved by the Christchurch City Council. Thousands of tidbits like this are in the Christchurch street names list, saving anyone curious about local history from having to poke around Papers Past themselves.
Most councils have some information about street names, although it’s usually presented as context to prevent people naming new streets from creating double-ups. It accompanies local bodies’ naming policies – being consistent with a theme is one part of Christchurch’s policy.
Auckland’s street names index, from Aarts Avenue in Manurewa to Zurich Place in Leabank, has some blank records and stabs in the dark – “Winthrop is presumably a surname” reads the record for Winthrop Avenue in Māngere East – but is also a great starting place for learning about local history. It reveals lots of themed names, too, from streets named after birds in Point Chevalier (Moa, Huia, Kiwi and Tui) to the Flat Bush subdivision where roads are named after All Blacks who played for Auckland or the Blues (Michael Jones, Frank Bunce, Eroni Clarke, Ofisa Tonu’u, Robin Brooke).
Some newer developments have even zanier patterns for street names. Clover Park in Auckland has a cluster of streets named for perfume and make-up manufacturers, some misspelt. The effect is similar to walking through duty free while severely jet lagged. There’s Diorella Drive, Arden Court and my favourite, Shalimar Place.
It’s fun to read the speculation on Auckland Council’s website about the winery-inspired names of a section of Flat Bush. Mission Heights Drive may be “quasi-Californian” but is “more likely a reference to the Mission Estate Winery, New Zealand’s oldest winery, established in Hawkes Bay by French missionaries in 1851.” Someone was definitely reading the Road Naming Guidelines with some tipples in front of them: nearby streets are named Vin Alto, Brancott, Fairhill and Leburn – surely a misspelling of Le Brun.
In Wellington, there’s no single list of street name origins but some great context in the city council’s “Street Smart” series from its resident historian. Lots of suburbs have themed names: streets in Khandallah are named after parts of India (Delhi, Punjab, Calcutta), streets in Island Bay are named after rivers (Tiber, Rhine, Thames, Danube) and streets in Brooklyn after American presidents (McKinley, Jefferson, Garfield). Honestly, seeing the commitment to themed street names is kind of a relief. It’s nice to see subdevelopers and city councils having some fun with it among the fresh tarmac and drying ink on resource consents.
Of course, there’s a flipside to naming streets: once a name is established, it’s hard to change, even if it’s necessary. Maori Road in Takaka was changed from Black Maori Road in the 1960s, when residents complained that it was named after a slur. Wellington’s Te Wharepōuri Street in Berhampore was changed from “Waripori” in 2020 after residents raised concerns that the name was a misspelling of Te Wharepōuri, a Ngāti Tāwhirikura and Te Āti Awa chief who signed te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840 in Wellington Harbour. However, the original sign had to stay up for some time afterwards, as seen in this photo from the Wellington City Council archives, to prevent confusion if, for example, emergency services had to access the street and couldn’t figure out where to go due to the name change.
That shouldn’t prevent cities from renaming roads, especially if it makes things clearer. Speaking as someone who once got off a bus in Church Street, Onehunga, when I was meant to get off that same bus in Church Road, Māngere Bridge, I think that there are limits to using geographical or municipal features as road names – clearly repetition of “church” names isn’t just a 19th century problem. Maybe some of the hundreds of Park, Beach, Church, Bridge, Mill and River roads and streets could be replaced by something new, or something themed. New Zealand writers, perhaps. Members of the Black Ferns’ World Cup-winning 2022 squad. Great New Zealand snack food inventors. Birds, bugs or fish that have won quasi-democratic annual competitions. Street names are bite-sized pieces of local history – why let them be mainly occupied by distant monarchs and dusty mayors?
