Tāmaki
| Suburb: | Tamaki |
| City: | Auckland |
| Island: | North Island |
| Surrounded by - to the north |
Point England |
Tamaki is a small suburb of East Auckland, 11 kilometres from the Auckland CBD, in the North Island of New Zealand. It is located by the banks of the estuarial Tamaki River, which is a southern arm of the Hauraki Gulf. The suburb is between the suburbs of Point England to the north and Panmure to the south.
Tamaki is under the local governance of Auckland Council. It is part of the much larger Tamaki parliamentary electorate.
Tamaki had a population of 4,263 at the 2001 census.
Volcano
To the west of the suburb is Mount Wellington, a 137-metre volcanic peak which is part of the Auckland Volcanic Field, and which was formed by an eruption around 9,000 years ago.
Related names
By a quirk of geographical naming, the suburb of East Tamaki is located several kilometres to the south of Tamaki because it takes its name from the fact that it is on the eastern side of the Tamaki River, rather than from its relationship to Tamaki.
The name Tāmaki was the Māori name for the Auckland isthmus, and was later applied to the eastern part of early Auckland (towards the Tamaki River), as in the name of the Tamaki Road Board.[1]
The name Tamaki is of contested origin. It is an ancient Polynesian word for battle; it can also mean full of people, i.e., heavily populated - an ironic possibility given that the Maori name of the heavily populated Auckland isthmus in Maori is Tamaki-makau-rau. A third possible origin of the names is Ta-Maki, meaning successful attack by Maki, which was the name of a local tribal chief.[citation needed]
References
- ^ McClure, Margaret (5 August 2016). "Auckland region – Government, education and health – Local government on the Tāmaki isthmus, 1871–1952". Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand.