We usually have both te reo Māori and English represented in our exhibitions, of which many are about our own taonga and stories, giving opportunities for deeper interpretation sometimes by writing in te reo Māori first, or in parallel with English, not just straight translation. However, some international exhibitions present unique challenges for our te reo Māori Tīma Tuhituhi – especially those about dinosaurs that disappeared before humans even turned up, let alone gave them names.

Here, Ariki Spooner, Kaitaki Tīma Tuhituhi Reo Māori, discusses the process of arriving at the te reo Māori name Ngā Taniwha o Rūpapa for the Dinosaurs of Patagonia exhibition coming this summer. 

Dinosaurs of Patagonia, easy as . . . no?

It was when we started to develop the mātauranga Māori aspects of the exhibition and create a uniquely Māori experience, we decided to revisit the naming process and ask some more meaningful questions – are we actually saying what we’re offering reo Māori visitors?

None of the Māori writers particularly loved the name Ngā Mokoweri o Patakonia – so we were happy to revisit it. We had a chance to apply our overarching mātauranga Māori approach to naming the exhibition and what the name could do.

We’d initially identified that we wanted to talk to mana whenua from Maungataniwha in the Hawke’s Bay where the Aotearoa fossils to be displayed in the exhibition originate, and we were aware of current work going on to uncover more fossils in the region. Long story short, it started getting a bit convoluted – so we decided to change tack and find a different avenue. More on that soon.

One of the earlier ideas for a name was Maungataniwha, but that was too specific to that one area of the country. Also, we didn’t want to make too many promises, since there are only a few fossils (and hopefully a bit of kōrero tuku iho) from that region. That name couldn’t hold up the whole exhibition.

It’s not the only name

We were also working on translations for places, dinosaurs, and time periods within the exhibition, which was quite a process. We have worked on some of this before in Te Taiao | Nature, with Gondwana – Te Uri Māroa. Our writer Ranea Aperahama had done a bit of research on that, drawn from a massive body of research provided by Bradford Haami. Actually, Brad’s mahi for Te Taiao forms the basis of nearly all of the mātauranga Māori that comes through in Ngā Taniwha o Rūpapa. However the name Te Uri Māroa has a confusing history, and it didn’t consolidate with the process we were applying to other areas in the exhibition.

For example, we are using Papa for all of the land masses to reference Papatūānuku. So, when we were deciding on names for places we have in the exhibition: Pangea – Papahoranui, Gondwanaland – Papatuatonga, and Laurasia – Papatuaraki, they were all coined by our Māori writers around names from Papatūānuku.

When dinosaurs ruled the earth

So we have Papa coming through the names of the land masses and we have Rangi, referencing Ranginui, feeding into the time periods. Rangi is a term for day – so it does measure time – and we thought that it was a happy marriage how all the land masses refer to Papatūānuku and all the time periods refer to Ranginui.

Another early proposal for the exhibition name relates to the name the Māori writers coined for the Cretaceous Period. We first looked at the meaning of Cretaceous – it has something to do with chalk. It’s a geological reference but it didn’t lend itself to modern whakaaro Māori, so we talked more about what’s in the exhibition and what messages are coming through in the Cretaceous segment. The key message is ‘dinosaurs rule the Earth’. So we termed that segment the age of dinosaurs, Rangi Mokonui.

So, the three early proposals for the exhibition name were Maungataniwha, which was too specific; Rangi Mokoweri, which felt confusing because it’s too close to how we termed the Cretaceous Period; and Ngā Mokoweri o Patakonia, which didn’t align with the enriched Māori experience we were creating.

Patagonia: Ko hea tērā? What’s the name of that place?

I did a bit of research and found out it’s not even pronounced Patagonia in Spanish. You have that soft G where the tongue doesn’t touch the roof of the mouth, so it would actually be Pata(y)onia. That meant if we were going to use Patakonia we were putting a kupu pōriro Māori around an English or anglicised mispronunciation of a Spanish name. No, thank you.

We also found there are different ideas about what the word Patagonia means and where it comes from. I pulled together a couple of articles to reference and because there’s an indigenous population there as well, I asked the question, ‘Can we reference the indigenous meanings and population in the name somehow?’

Following in the giant footsteps

Going back to my research, the first thing I read was that the explorer Magellan named the southern part of South America Patagonia, based on his own observations of the indigenous people there and how big they were. From memory, it was a reference to their big feet, so I just threw that out there early in the process, as an example. My thinking was that maybe there’s a way to reference the giant footsteps of the dinosaurs and the big feet of the indigenous people, which still has its reference to Patagonia.

That opened up the door, I suppose, and things kind of snowballed after that. Our other Māori writer Tamahou McGarvey picked up that idea and ran with it, deriving a Māori name for Patagonia. He landed on Rūpapa, and there’s a lot of kōrero around it.

In short, Rū comes out of his research where he found a different definition from what I found. Whether it’s true that Magellan coined the name Patagonia was just one take. Tamahou was looking into as much of the indigenous language and culture and meaning as he could, and what he came across related to the seismic activity of the region, so he wanted to reference that, hence Rū as in Rūaumoko.

Rūpapa – Patagonia

Since we use Papa in the rest of our naming conventions, he felt really confident that he had arrived at a good place with the name and pronounced, ‘Rūpapa is the Māori name for Patagonia’, and it just basically caught on from there.

Once Tamahou had stated it – and he applies a lot of process, keeps the research in hand, and has a lot of tikanga around why he’s choosing to coin things the way he does – it started to cement itself as our term for Patagonia, going as far as informing the name of the Patagotitan dinosaur, Moko-tipua-Rūpapa.

Ngā Taniwha – Dinosaurs

Meanwhile, we still needed to resolve the rest of the exhibition title. I put forward the question, ‘How about we have the suggestion of taniwha in the title?’. Even though we use several different terms for the dinos (there’s mokoweri which is a general term for dinosaurs, and mokonui for the bigger ones), we don’t explicitly use the word taniwha to mean dinosaur in the exhibition. However, it’s an appropriate term for dinosaurs, and it also references the place Maungataniwha.

So, for people coming into the exhibition, they’ll go ‘Okay I get it, some of these dinosaurs would potentially be considered taniwha’, but it’s very specific and it doesn’t tie in very strongly anywhere else.

However, after we confirmed the name Ngā Taniwha o Rūpapa it opened things up and we were able to incorporate the idea of taniwha into other areas. We use wae-taniwha, or dinosaur feet, for theropods, and wae-ngārara, or reptile feet, for sauropods.

We also reference taniwha for one specific dinosaur – the Tyrannotitan – which we call Niwha-tipua. Niwha is often used as a shortening for taniwha. That particular dinosaur is huge and a meat eater, it must have been quite a menace, so that was the name the writers decided to give it.

Naming someone else’s whenua

When the name Rūpapa was first proposed, the thought hadn’t occurred to me, but I soon realised it was the only thing left hanging out there for me – whether it is our place to name someone else’s whenua, especially when we’ve never even been there.

So we had a few more conversations to make sure we were on the same page and clear about everything, and that we’d done all of our due diligence.

It’s different to naming places like Pangea, Laurasia, and Gondwana because those aren’t the same land masses anymore, and there are no cultural implications from naming those places through our own process, whereas Patagonia is a region where people and cultures actually live.

We obviously already have names for some other countries like Ahitereiria for Australia, but they weren’t coined by us here at Te Papa. I don’t know who came up with those names, but Ahitereiria is a simple loan word. There is also Te Pāpaka-a-Māui, which is in Te Aka, the online Māori dictionary, and then Te Whenua Moemoeā (The dreamland) which isn’t recognised in Te Aka, but is more in line with the Indigenous cultural perspective.

Te ao Patagonia?

The problem is that we were applying te ao Māori thinking to someone else’s home. We talked about Te Pāpaka-a-Māui, which is in the dictionary. Again, that was someone else doing that process, and this is really down to the three of us in a room just coming up with a name.

My ideal was more around it being a subtle reference, not actually renaming their home. I was hoping for something that would reference the meaning of Patagonia, rather than making an official name for the country. That’s the kind of thing that hangs over us in pretty much all of our work.

Whakapapa of taxonomy

The scientific naming process draws on taxonomy, which has been a big learning curve for me – they’ve got some solid processes, so we’re starting to build that type of framework for ourselves, now that our writers have such a strong process in how they describe species.

My team incorporate a lot of different kinds of processes when coining new names, going into the whakapapa, looking for as much local knowledge as possible, and then into all the reference material they can source including Pacific Island languages and mātauranga. Finally, if all that fails, they look at the behaviour and the appearance of the species or place and model their naming process off what appears to be how a lot of our tīpuna named things back in the day. Things were often named for what they do, where they live, how they behave, or a story of their discovery.

Te papakupu o te reo – the lexicon of the language

I’m now looking at what frameworks exist to get kupu officialised in te reo Māori as well as give some protection to our Māori writers. They’re really exposed, having to coin new names, absolutely putting it out there, with people coming to Te Papa with an expectation that it’s a source of authority. It has an educational prowess to it, it’s a recognised institution, so people take what they read on the walls as given, and there’s a lot of potential for backlash which is a risk for the organisation.

It’s hard because, just with Ngā Taniwha o Rūpapa alone, we aren’t looking at the entire Paleontological sector, we’re only working with what’s coming in on the floor – we’re not creating names for all the other dino stuff which would be a gigantic undertaking.

I’m keen to produce a supplementary glossary that goes with each exhibition, giving provenance and whakapapa to the names our writers derive and giving the audience an appreciation of the intensive mahi that goes on to coin a name like Ngā Taniwha o Rūpapa.

Further reading

• Ngā Taniwha o Rūpapa | Dinosaurs of Patagonia is opening at Te Papa on December 16, 2023
• Te reo Māori at Te Papa
• Fossils and dinosaur stories on our website
• Te Papa is constantly working to improve our te reo Māori use and presentation across our exhibitions and websites as part of our commitment to Maihi Karauna – Read about the findings from research  we commissioned along with Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand and the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa:
  He rangahau minenga: Te whakamahi ā-ipurangi i te reo Māori ki ngā pae ipurangi ahurea o Aotearoa | Audience research: Use of te reo Māori on Aotearoa New Zealand cultural websites

Dinosaurs of Patagonia
Produced by MEF, Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio Trelew, Argentina