NOMENCLATURE.

Manawatu Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 422, 8 July 1905, Page 2

NOMENCLATURE.

The Seddon Cabinet seems intent on smearing its own stodgy individual nomenclature over the whole landscape. For instance, the people of Blenheim wanted the township of the estate lately taken over by the Seddon Government to be called Flaxbourne, or in the alternative Clifford, after Sir. Charles Clifford (the first Speaker of a New Zealand Parliament) who originally acquired the property from the fighting chieftain, Te Rauparaha. But local sentiment has been overruled (as it was the other day when the Government took over the appropriately named Mt. Vernon estate and called it "Lindsay"), and po3tic "Flaxbourne" is to be- distorted into prosaic " Ward." We bore " Seddon," and " Seddonville," and even " Wood-ville" without a protest (the 1 latter was before < our time), but '«« Ward"—" Ward"—we do object to " Ward." We raise this unavailing "infant crying in the night" protest because .we can perceive what it is going to lead to. It is going to lead to towns being called Jones (fancy the township of Jones!) and Mills (imagine Charliemillstown) and Pitt (located in a mining district likely, and prefixed " Bottomless ".!.), and Carroll (though of course an aristocratic suburban retreat called Timi Kara wouldn't be half bad). Also Tamduncanville! and so on. Where is the thing going to end ? If it ends with the name of the latest acquisition to the Cabinet, and somebody rises .up to nominate Mahuta Tawhiao PotatauTe Wherowhero as a fit and proper pseudonym for a given locality nobody but Welshmen or Russians will venture to take up the holdings in the vicinity.