View the first piece here: Using te reo in our everyday activities at the University.

This week we will look at Pūaha and Kurawai, building on the waka metaphor.

Your waka may shelter in the mouth of a river

Complementing the ‘waka’ metaphor, words for different kinds of waterways have been used for parts of the University. Rivers, streams, and the mouths of rivers, as well as bays which are places to find shelter. Many names are about ways that students can travel through on their journeys, while also finding comfort, protection, and safety.

“What that means is that when Rawinia and I get requests for naming, we try to build on that metaphor," says Dr Hall.

"When an individual student comes to the University, what are they doing? If they are the waka, how are they traversing a learning journey?”

One example of applying the waterway metaphor is Pūaha, the name of the student portal. When students enrol, all the information about their enrolment, their courses, and where they can find information about who can help them, is through Pūaha.

“Pūaha is the mouth of a river,” says Dr Hall. “We’re basically saying ‘you've pulled up your waka, you're here at the very start of your access to this river of learning that you're on’. You come into the pūaha.”

Another example is Kurawai, which is the name for the University’s student customer relationship management system. The word kurawai means a reservoir, so it’s a fitting name for the place where all that information can come together and be stored and drawn on.

“On its own, the word kura can mean a treasure, or a taonga—something really important,” Dr Hall says. “We’ve applied it to this repository that’s the source of information for our students, about our students, which is something really precious. And we have to take care of it and protect it.”

In the coming weeks we will provide more background on te reo names at the University.