Restoring Aunty’s real name

A teacher changed her name to make it easier to say — and it stuck, for 75 years.

Here’s Maureen Sinton on how her aunt finally reclaimed her real name.

 

We called her Aunty Naru.

It was a harsh-sounding name. Both syllables equally stressed: “Na”, like “yeah nah”. And the “ru”, like the end of kangaroo or the beginning of rude. Nahroo.

As a child growing up in the 1960s, I wondered why Aunty had a name that no one else had. In the mid-1980s, we got the first hint of the story behind the name.

It came about when my sister, her niece, announced that she had almost decided to name her first child Ngāhuia. It was either Ngahuia or Princess Margaret Rose.

Aunty Naru rang my sister to plead with her not to call her child Ngāhuia. She told her a Māori name would forever be a burden on the wee girl. My sister chose to ignore this sad and telling advice.

Years later, she told me the rest of the story. I can’t remember when, exactly. Maybe it was on one of our drives to the marae. We used to talk a lot on those drives.

Aunty loved going to the marae. She’d spent a lot of time there as a child and, when she was in her early 80s, she became a regular visitor again. At the time, we were in the middle of our Treaty settlement process, and there were lots of hui to keep people updated.

Naru could be brusque, but she softened in the company of whānau. She loved the fuss. Always the comfy chair, a cup of tea, and ginger crunch. Always a container bursting with leftovers. Oh, and the kamokamo fresh from the garden, mustn’t forget the kamokamo. Here, she was a kaumātua, hau kāinga, great-granddaughter of the respected tohunga tā moko, Anaru Makiwhara.

And that was the link. Anaru. When they were hapū with their third child, her parents had settled on Anaru as the name for their son.

But the son turned out to be a daughter.

No problem. Easily solved. Take the “A” from the front of the name, place it at the end. The “nah” softens into a “na” as it melts into the roll of the “r”, followed by the gentle diphthong . . . “u” . . . “a”.

Narua. A pretty name for a pretty girl with blonde curls.

But when she got to school, the name Narua was too much for the teacher. Maybe it was the unique nature of the name. Maybe it was the three syllables. (Heaven knows how they would’ve coped with a pupil called after Princess Margaret Rose’s older sister, Elizabeth). Or maybe the problem was that it sounded too Māori.

Whatever the reason, the teacher told Narua her name was too difficult to say and shortened it to Naru. And it stuck. For the next 75-odd years. Aunty didn’t like it. She stopped short of saying how much she didn’t like it, but it clearly irked her.

More than a decade ago, at the funeral of my mother, Narua’s sister, I made a point of acknowledging her in the eulogy, using her full name. Narua.

Narua! The story had got around by then, and others were doing the same. It didn’t take long before everyone at the marae was calling her Aunty Narua. Even her cousins, who had called her Naru for decades, were now calling her by her correct name. She liked it.

Aunty told me how she had corrected her friends at her weekly garden club when they called her Naru. “I told them, my name is Narua,” she replayed to me. How very brave, I thought.

Meantime, our Treaty settlement process was progressing, and we eventually hopped on a plane to Wellington to see the Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki Settlement Bill introduced to parliament. Next stop was the select committee hearing.

There were many excellent submissions in the hearing. When I stood to deliver mine, I told the story of Aunty Narua’s name. An example of cultural hegemony. I talked about the loss of name and identity and the impact it had on her. But I added the happier ending: that now, in her 80s, Narua had reclaimed her name.

In colonial Aotearoa, the marginalisation of non-English-sounding names was a common occurrence among many ethnicities. In some cases, such as Narua’s, the change was foisted on them. In other cases, immigrants chose a new name for themselves to make life easier. My Croatian grandfather on my father’s side chose Sinton over Srzentic. (There are many Sintons in West Auckland where he worked in the ceramic pipe factory that later became Crown Lynn.)

I watched the second reading of our bill at home. Along with others, Labour MP Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki, stood to commend the bill. And then she read out my submission. She told the story of Narua’s name and the wandering “a”.

There was a small glitch. Anahila attributed the story to the fabulous Emily Karaka, artist of renown and a much-loved member of Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki. I understand Emily was suitably surprised to hear the misattribution. But that aside, I was so excited. Narua’s story had been told to the nation, and it will live forever in the history of Aotearoa, in the Hansard of April 12, 2018. I rang Narua to tell her of her place in the history books. Typically, Narua was quietly, cautiously pleased.

Aunty Narua passed away on a Saturday morning in October 2025, at the age of 95.

She began life as Narua, and she was Narua when she passed. In between, a wrong was corrected. The mana of her name was restored. Moe mai, Aunty Narua.

 

Dr Maureen Sinton (Ngāi Tai Ki Tāmaki) is a senior lecturer and Undergraduate Programme Lead at Te Ara Poutama, Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Development, at AUT.  Her academic career followed 30 years in the media as a radio producer, and in television as a TV ONE programmer at TVNZ, and a producer. She served on her tribal trust for six years during their Treaty settlement negotiations. She lives in Tāmaki Makaurau

E-Tangata, 2025