Tamaki, New Zealand

Tamaki is a suburb of the city of Auckland, in the North Island of New Zealand. It is located in the east of the city, 11 kilometres from the city centre, by the banks of the estuarial Tamaki River, which is a southern arm of the Hauraki Gulf. The suburb is between the suburbs of Point England to the north and Panmure to the south.

Tamaki is under the local governance of the Auckland City Council. According to the 2001 census, Tamaki has a population of 4263.

Tamaki is Currently Represented in Parliament By Allan Peachey of The National Party.

Volcano

To the west of the suburb is Mount Wellington, a 137-metre volcanic peak which is part of the Auckland Volcanic Field, and which was formed by an eruption around 9,000 years ago.

Famous residents

For many years, Tamaki's most famous resident was the somewhat volcanic Prime Minister of New Zealand Robert Muldoon, who was Member of Parliament for the Tamaki electorate (which included parts of several adjoining suburbs, mostly north and north-west) from 1960 until 1991. The eminent social anthropologist Sir Raymond Firth was born in Tamaki in 1901.

Related names

By a quirk of geographical naming, the suburb of East Tamaki is located several kilometres to the south of Tamaki because it takes its name from the fact that it is on the eastern side of the Tamaki River, rather than from its relationship to Tamaki.

The name "Tamaki" is of contested origin. It is an ancient Polynesian word for "battle"; it can also mean "full of people", i.e., heavily populated - an ironic possibility given that the Maori name of the heavily populated Auckland isthmus in Maori is "Tamaki-makau-rau". A third possible origin of the names is "Ta-Maki", meaning "successful attack by Maki", which was the name of a local tribal chief.

The name has become a surname. See, for example, Brian Tamaki of the Destiny Church.