Childhood and Names
Rapata Wahawaha was born about 1820 into the Te Aowera sub-tribe of the Ngati Porou, one of the major Maori tribes in the eastern regions of the North Island of New Zealand. While still a child he was captured and became the slave of Rapata Whakapuhia whose name he perforce adopted.
However, in later years when he rose to prominence he worked closely with Donald McLean who, having a broad Scottish accent, habitually pronounced his name as "Ropata" and it became the name by which he is generally known.
Read more about this topic: Ropata Wahawaha
Famous quotes containing the words childhood and, childhood and/or names:
“[Children] do not yet lie to themselves and therefore have not entered upon that important tacit agreement which marks admission into the adult world, to wit, that I will respect your lies if you will agree to let mine alone. That unwritten contract is one of the clear dividing lines between the world of childhood and the world of adulthood.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
““Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismiss names as a detail have never been displaced; but the peoples on the peripheries are always being displaced. That is why they insist upon their continuity—their links with their dead and the unborn.”
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