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    • Main contributor: Dr. David Heffernan
    The New Zealand archipelago.

    New Zealand surnames are the names held by the approximately six million people who either live in New Zealand or New Zealanders abroad. Because New Zealand is a country which has overwhelmingly experienced inwards migration and colonization, rather than emigration, most people of New Zealand heritage live within the country itself, the population of which is just over 5.1 million. The diaspora is small, perhaps no more than 750,000 people. Owing to the colonization of the islands by the British from the 1810s onwards, most surnames in New Zealand today are of British extraction, names like Smith, Wilson, Williams, Brown and Taylor. Colonization also saw the Maori natives begin to adopt surnames, the most common pattern being that individuals used their father’s given name as their surname. Inward migration to New Zealand from Asian countries like China, Vietnam, Thailand and India has seen surnames like Li, Zhang, Patel, Singh and Chen become increasingly common, particularly so in multicultural Auckland.

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    History of New Zealand surnames

    Copy of the Treaty of Waitangi

    New Zealand’s surname landscape has been formed almost entirely over the last 200 or so years. The first European explorer to discover New Zealand was the Dutchman, Abel Tasman, back in 1642, and the archipelago still carries the legacy of this, being named after the Zeeland region of the Netherlands.[1] As with Australia, though, the Dutch did not capitalize on their discoveries and so it was that New Zealand did not experience the first flush of European settlement until the early nineteenth century when British colonists in Australia began to realize the potential uses of the remote archipelago as bases for whaling in the South Pacific. There was also a growing desire to claim control of the region before the French, Britain’s perennial colonial rival, managed to establish themselves in the archipelago.[2]

    The official history of New Zealand as a British colony is typically identified as commencing in 1840 when the Treaty of Waitangi was agreed between Captain William Hobson on behalf of the British and some of the local Maori chiefs on the North Island of New Zealand.[3] These initial treaties, the legalities of which were not fully understood by the Maori leaders at the time of signing, only prevented war for a few years and between 1845 and 1872 a series of New Zealand Wars were fought as the British colonial presence here expanded.[4] From around 20,000 colonists of European background in 1850, the number of Pakeha (White New Zealanders) expanded to approximately 200,000 in 1870 and approximately three-quarters of a million by 1900. In the twentieth century, New Zealand became a cosmopolitan country as events such as the Vietnam War led to an influx of growing numbers of people from Asia, changing the surname landscape from one primarily based on British surnames to a more complex one.[5]

    New Zealand naming conventions

    There are a number of different factors involved in the creation of the New Zealand surname landscape, as is the case with any colonial society. The overwhelming majority of New Zealand surnames are effectively of British origin and primarily English in line with the development of the archipelago as a British colony from the 1810s onwards. As British rule expanded there was a growing push for the Maori natives to adopt surnames as well, which many did simply by taking their father’s first name as their surname. The growing influx of people from parts of Asia like India, China, Vietnam and Thailand since the late nineteenth century, and in particular since the 1970s, has resulted in a disparate surname landscape where names like Wang, Singh and Lee are very common, particularly in cosmopolitan Auckland.

    Most common New Zealand surnames

    The most popular New Zealand surnames tend to be:  

    • Smith – An occupational surname of English origin, indicating an ancestor was a blacksmith or ironworker of some kind, this has consistently been the most common surname in New Zealand for over a century.
    • Wilson – A patronymic surname of English origin, one that basically means ‘son of William’, this is the second most common surname in New Zealand.
    • Williams – Another surname which means ‘son of William’. It is one of the most common surnames in New Zealand.
    • Brown – A descriptor surname which originally emerged in England in late medieval times to describe someone with brown hair or a swarthy complexion. It is by differing accounts either the third or fourth most common surname in the country.
    • Singh – A surname which highlights the influx of people from India and Southeast Asia into New Zealand in recent decades, in which region it is a common surname. It basically means ‘lion’ and is one of the ten most common surnames in India today.
    • Wang – The prevalence of Wang as a surname in New Zealand evinces the large influx of Chinese people into the country in recent decades, with Chinese New Zealanders now accounting for over 5% of the population, their numbers growing from around 150,000 in 2006 to 250,000 today.[6]

    Famous New Zealanders

    • Edmund Hillary – The first individual to lead an expedition that successfully scaled Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak. His surname is of Anglo-Norman origin, with Hillary being derived from a French term for ‘cheerful’, meaning the conqueror of Everest had an ancestor of such a sunny disposition he became known for it.[7]
      Edmund Hillary
    • Peter Jackson – A film director and producer from New Zealand most famous for directing the Lord of the Rings films. His surname is a fairly obvious patronymic surname meaning ‘son of Jack’ or ‘son of John’.[8]
    • Jonah Lomu – Acknowledged as the player of the tournament at the 1995 Rugby World Cup and one of the great players of rugby union, though he never actually won the World Cup. His surname is of Maori origin.[9]
    • Jacinda Ardern – The Prime Minister of New Zealand between 2017 and 2023, her surname is a toponymic derived from the Arden region in Warwickshire.[10]

    See also

    Explore more about New Zealand surnames

    References

    1. ↑ https://nzhistory.govt.nz/people/abel-tasman
    2. ↑ https://teara.govt.nz/en/whaling/print
    3. ↑ https://teara.govt.nz/en/te-tiriti-o-waitangi-the-treaty-of-waitangi/print
    4. ↑ https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/new-zealands-19th-century-wars/introduction
    5. ↑ https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/maori-and-european-population-numbers-1838%E2%80%931901
    6. ↑ https://www.dia.govt.nz/press.nsf/d77da9b523f12931cc256ac5000d19b6/738cf2a0e2ef4d2ecc257d340013fc3b!OpenDocument
    7. ↑ https://nzhistory.govt.nz/people/edmund-hillary
    8. ↑ https://www.newzealand.com/uk/feature/sir-peter-jackson/
    9. ↑ https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/09/sport/rugby-world-cup-jonah-lomu-spt-intl/
    10. ↑ https://www.beehive.govt.nz/minister/biography/jacinda-ardern


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