Pakeha child/Maori name

I was just browsing through some slightly older threads (catching up) and noticed rubydooby's thread about whether Ariana was too Maori for a white child

(OT: love that name, don't think of it as a Maori name at all, but that's probably because I knew of its Welsh origins)

We're in the process of legally changing Kiya's name. She will be going from Kiya Mary K--- (my maiden name), to Kiya Mary Aroha L-------- (my married name, and that of her brothers and Nat). Nat asked to include Aroha as a middle name because it means Love.

Those of you who've met us know we are as white a family as you get! Kiya is 6th generation on my side to be born in New Zealand, but our family heritage is Welsh/Scottish. Do you think Kiya is too white to have a Maori middle name? She understands why we've chosen it, and is proud of it, but I worry she'll be teased.

considering its her third middle name it will prob hardly get used and i dont see anything wrong with it at all. mind you you never know - some uppity maori might want her to give them her name back in later years...hahaha

its lovely and goes well with the rest of her name...

(and truthfully shes probably going to get teased about kiya as a first name anyway. i think all kids get teased about their name at some stage, wether its their first or surname. i feel sorry for my son cause i stuck him with a name too close to a girls... )

I say go for it too, Aroha is a reasonably common name these days anyway, and like Gandt said, it's a third middle name so probably won't get used all that often. My girls are Maya Grace, Sienna Marie and Mercedes Kailah, we hardly ever use their long Maori names except on official forms, they're more symbolic names than names to be used.

My friend's name is Ngaio and she is from the most Pakeha family I know (well, apart from my own!)... I never even thought about her not being entitled to her name or whatever as she has always been that way... it suits her perfectly.

She did end up going into the bilingual unit at our intermediate to learn Maori, but then moved back into mainstream when she got to High School. I thought that was cool.

Snap, I was about to say exactly the same thing.

Not to mention all the different cultrural names people use - how many Rebekahs and Isaacs that you know are jewish?

Yep I'm with the others (Hailstones and Emma, specifically - since they said what I was going to)

Both my kids have maori middle names... Didn't occur to me not to do it even tho there is not a drop of maori blood between us?

My friends daughter is named Aroha and she is English/scottish decent.

I really dont see a prob with it Becca either. And like Emma with her kids and their names, I have a daughter with a spanish name and a son with a French name and we are Tokelauan lol

If you like it DO IT

miss wrote: Not to mention all the different cultrural names people use - how many Rebekahs and Isaacs that you know are jewish?

True, i'm a Rebecca and I ain't Jewish.

I really love the name, and if anyone questions you about your Pakeha daughter with the Maori middle name, tell them it's a Kiwi name!

I think there are so many beautiful Maori names out there for both boys and girls and it would be a shame not to use them just because they are associated with a particular culture that you don't identify with