The NZ Herald and Stuff have run a number of stories about a restaurant using the name “Kingi” and a few Māori and non Māori claiming it is cultural appropriation.
The arguments are in my opinion getting so absurd that that I worry about the knowledge of some people who claim to be cultural experts and claim that by being Māori they are offended and some how Māori culture experts.
The articles in at least mainstream media have covered most of the bases why the word ‘Kingi’ is not cultural appropriation. The restaurant has done everything correctly in their consultation. The most important action was by adding a fish in their logo to further clarify that it is in reference to the Kingfish. Kingi is a word I often hear associated with the Kingfish.
But, in this day of false media and conspiracies, issues like this and the ‘huruhuru’ get exposure. The ‘huruhuru’ debacle was covered well by at least two highly regarded Māori language experts Quinton Hita and Paraone Gloyne explaining the word was about context and maturity levels, though I did not see their commentary in mainstream media.
If we are going to claim cultural appropriation with the word ‘kingi’ then we must firstly recognise that Māori appropriated the word from the English language (in most likely the 1800’s) who appropriated it from the Germans and so on.
Pre Captain Cook and colonisation, the word ‘kingi” with a macron or without, did not exist in the Māori language. It was a word that was likely coined or made a transliteration by the Rev. Samuel Marsden in about 1814 while he was colonising Māori to learn the Bible. Then later in about 1834 with the printing of the Bible.
The transliteration would also likely to have been used by early colonisers to describe their Kings and monarchies. Monarchies with Kings and Queens were not a part of Māori society so the word had to be created.
In the 1850’s the Kīngitanga movement created and the term Māori King was created. I extrapolate that the reason was to have a authority figure similar to the colonial settlers, as was the thinking behind the Māori Parliament.
Since the early 1800’s the word ‘Kingi’ has been given to prominent Māori leaders of multiple Iwi and is used as a surname and sometimes used as a transaltion of the surname ‘King’. As with any family name, the name could be sacred to any family who have that name in their recent genealogy, but not to the wider Māori population.
The word Kingi is still a transliteration, therefore not sacred (tapu). Had the word originated from an earlier period it would likely be scared and offensive to use from a Te Ao Māori perspective.
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