Whanganui councillors and staff have been encouraged to be intentional about pronouncing the city’s name during Te Wiki o te Reo Māori.
Māori ward councillor Julie Herewini stressed the importance of pronouncing Whanganui correctly at Tuesday’s district council meeting, as councillors discussed an update to the Strategy for Whanganui.
Herewini, one of the first two councillors elected to the Māori ward when it was introduced in 2022, said Te Wiki o te Reo Māori was a good opportunity for councillors and staff to focus on the pronunciation of the city’s name.
“In the spirit of Te Wiki o te Reo Māori, and in the context of te reo Māori towns, I just wonder if we can work a little bit across the board throughout council this week on our pronunciation of Whanganui,” she said.
“I hear varying degrees of that – some Wong-ga-nui, and lots of different things – so if we’re talking about our strategy for Whanganui in Te Wiki o te Reo Māori, let’s be quite intentional about how we make the effort to work our way through that this week. Tēnā tātou.”
Herewini’s comments come against a backdrop of a long history surrounding the spelling and pronunciation of Whanganui.
The city and river have been known by both “Whanganui” and “Wanganui”, reflecting dialectal differences in how the Māori name was pronounced and recorded. The Whanganui River’s name was officially changed to the Māori spelling in 1991.
Decades later, changes to include the ‘h’ were made to the city, district and region names.
In 2009, following a proposal from Te Rūnanga o Tūpoho and a public consultation, the Minister for Land Information decided that both “Whanganui” and “Wanganui” could be used as official alternative names for the city. The decision was formalised in Parliament in 2012.
In 2015, the Minister for Land Information said the spelling of Wanganui District would be corrected to Whanganui District. In 2018, the ‘h’ was included in the official spelling of Manawatū-Whanganui Region.
Mayor Andrew Tripe, who has been learning te reo Māori, responded to Herewini’s comments on Tuesday and briefly stumbled over the pronunciation himself.
“That deserves a reply because here we are working for Whanganui,” he said, stumbling over the name, before correcting himself in good humour.
“There’s a ‘nga’ in the middle there,” he added with a smile.
Councillor Kate Joblin also took particular care with the pronunciation of Whanganui during the ensuing discussion.
The exchange came as councillors reviewed the Strategy for Whanganui – Rautaki mō Whanganui, a long-term framework outlining the kind of district the community wants to create.
Adopted in 2025, the strategy replaced the 2014 Leading Edge Strategy and has five strategic goals: to grow, build, protect, activate and celebrate.
It sets a goal of increasing the district’s population to 53,000 by 2035, alongside targets including improving river quality, bringing median household income closer to the national median, growing tourism, increasing use of council facilities and supporting the construction of 1000 affordable homes.
A report by council officer David Gurney said the review would give the strategy a clearer role in guiding investment through the Long-Term Plan.
“The five goals continue to describe the kind of Whanganui the community wants,” Gurney said.
The review considered community wellbeing, an environmental scan of how the district is tracking, the council’s priorities for its current three-year term and the relationship between council activities and the strategy’s goals.
Gurney said the updated strategy would provide a stronger framework for council decision-making.
“Used in this way, the strategy provides a clearer basis for elected members to make service and investment trade-offs with an explicit understanding of the outcomes for the community.”
The framework will inform development of the 2027-2037 Long-Term Plan, including levels of service, performance measures and investment priorities.
“The strategy can provide the line of sight from community aspirations and evidence, through council priorities and activities, to levels of service, performance and investment.
“At the end of the day these activities are trying to improve community wellbeing,” Gurney said.
A Māori translation of the strategy will also be published.
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
