By Casey Costello, Don Brash

The official name of our nation, New Zealand, is a vital and important part of our nation’s collective history and culture.

But our public servants, apparently under the instruction of Jacinda Ardern and Nanaia Mahuta, are now calling our nation Aotearoa or the ugly and clunky Aotearoa-New Zealand. Aotearoa is now used on official documents including our passports.

This is an outrage.

Such an important matter, the renaming of our nation, should only be made with our willing consent.

What you need to know.

Dutch explorer Abel Tasman named our islands New Zealand in 1642Maori adopted this name, Nu Tirani, the name used in the Treaty of Waitangi:

• The name Aotearoa first appeared in writing as a Maori name for New Zealand in 1855
• New Zealand, translated from the Dutch “new sea-land”, is a beautiful and appropriate name for our islands

Renaming our nation as Aotearoa or Aotearoa-New Zealand would be damaging to our international reputation and extremely expensive:

• Aotearoa would baffle non-New Zealanders who would have no idea of what or where this new place is – this would remain a problem for decades
• We have collectively spent hundreds of millions of dollars in creating our New Zealand brand, which would be destroyed if we became Aotearoa or Aotearoa-New Zealand
• The six syllable Aotearoa is cumbersome and difficult for non-Maori speakers to pronounce – this cannot be easily overcome.

What you can do:

We must fight to preserve our cultural heritage: Jacinda Ardern and Nanaia Mahuta have no authority to change the name of our nation by stealth.

Please sign our petition below demanding that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern publicly affirm New Zealand as the name of our country, and forward this petition to your friends, family and colleagues.

A majority of New Zealanders strongly oppose changing the name of our country – we must speak up.

Thank you,

Don Brash and Casey Costello

Hobson’s Pledge

66,494 signatures (number of signatories at time of print)

We, the undersigned citizens of New Zealand, demand that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern publicly affirms that the official name of our nation is New Zealand, not Aotearoa-New Zealand, or Aotearoa, and instructs all government departments to use the current official name only, which means on New Zealand passports and in all communications where the name of New Zealand appears.

Click here to sign petition.