The City Rail Link (CRL), in conjunction with its partner Auckland Transport, has formally applied to the New Zealand Geographic Board Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa to name its four rail stations.

The station names are Maungawhau Station (Mt Eden), Karanga a Hape Station (Karangahape), Te Wai Horotiu Station (Aotea) and Waitematā Station (Britomart) and have been submitted to the Geographic Board asking it to adopt the names.

NZGB is responsible for the nation’s nomenclature and assigns new names and alters or discontinues existing ones. People can provide feedback on the names to the NZGB once it starts its consultation process.

The proposed new names were released earlier this month and were well-received by the public, interested parties and partner organisations.

The names were gifted to the people of Auckland by the CRL’s Mana Whenua Forum and celebrate the project’s strong links to mana whenua history and storytelling and more accurately reflect the station’s geographic locations.

Dr Sean Sweeney, CRL chief executive, says the gifted names reflect the respectful and fruitful relationship forged with the Mana Whenua Forum, representing eight Auckland iwi: “The CRL is designed to carry Aucklanders forward into a world-class rail-driven future but it is important to anchor our efforts to the past and the history of the people who have lived here.”

Maungawhau Station directly references the significant nearby dormant volcano, Maugawhau/Mt Eden (the mountain of the whau, so named for the whau tree growing on its slopes and which was an important resource for Māori). Karanga a Hape Station is actually a correction of the existing name, Karangahape, and means the Call of Hope. It references how a kaitiaki (guardian) helped Hape cross the ocean and arrive in Aotearoa before the Tainui waka that had left him behind.

Te Wai Horotiu will be New Zealand’s busiest rail station when the CRL opens and its name is a direct link to the past when the Wai Horotiu stream flowed below nearby Queen St and provided a service to local people. Waitematā is named after the Waitematā Harbour and the rail station itself is built on land reclaimed from where its waters and Wai Horotiu merged.

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