Editorial: Mayor Laws' spelling test

Opinion

It will doubtless come as a shock to the professionally opinionated Michael Laws, mayor of the country's most famously misspelled city, to be told that his opinion is only as good as the reasoning behind it. That being so, his opinion on the question of whether Wanganui should be spelled Whanganui is not very good at all.

Laws' description of the proposal as "historically and morally wrong" and a "direct attack" on the city is characteristically extravagant rhetoric - but it does not cut any ice.

The New Zealand Geographic Board, having recognised that Wanganui is a misspelling, has decided to ask the public's view before it decides whether to officially designate a change. That's a matter for regret, since the emotive nature of the debate makes the outcome of any opinion-sampling predictable. The board should have taken a lead in officially righting a wrong.

Those who claim that imposing a change on the city tramples on the rights of its citizens have scant regard for the rights of the culture from which the name derives. "Wanga" is meaningless; "whanga" is dense with meaning.

Opponents of a name change seem wilfully blind to the historical and philological arguments, instead petulantly claiming that a century and a half has delivered them some customary right of usage. What then do they make of the customary rights of those who named the river and the area hundreds of years before Europeans arrived?

It is not hard to detect a nasty anti-Maori undertone to many of the comments from defenders of the status quo, and their argument should not prevail. The sooner the error is corrected the better. It is a matter of respect for others' views - something the strident Laws would do well to cultivate.