Tamaki / Tāmaki-makau-rau

Matt McCarten:

I'm sure some in the leafy suburbs in the isthmus will be annoyed at having to pronounce their new name Tamaki Makau Rua. But they'll get used to it.

If their pronunciation needs work, then the NZ Herald sub editors' spelling needs even more assistance.

The Tangata Whenua themselves say the name may have been from any number of sources. So it is interesting to see the stories they leave out as to what credibility they give to other - competing - histories.
Going on to say:

In its ancient history, people of many tribes including Te Arawa, Ngati Awa, Hauraki, Waikato and Ngati Whatua ancestors lived in Tamaki at one time or another. The tribes of Tamaki had extended periods of peace that led to the creation of great wealth (in Maori terms) Te Pai me te whai rawa o Tamaki! Because Tamaki was desired by many it meant the people and leaders of Tamaki have been good diplomats and good at forming alliances with neighbouring tribes.

The stories of a chief, Kiwi Tamaki and his land of a hundred - or thousand - lovers is the preferred childhood myth - but that relates to the tribe that Ngati Whatua ousted so perhaps that is why they make no mention of him on that page. Te Ara:

Around 1741 their paramount chief, Kiwi Tāmaki, was killed in a battle at Paruroa (Great Muddy Creek) by Te Waha-akiaki of Te Taoū and Ngāti Whātua. This happened during a sequence of events that saw Ngāti Whātua take possession of central Tāmaki.

The lovers and Kiwi Tamaki tale fits well with Waitemata being "sparkling waters" rather than the more darker options given by Te Ara:

The northern harbour, according to Te Arawa tradition, was named Te Waitematā (the obsidian waters) by the ancestor Tamatekapua, after he placed a volcanic stone as a mauri (talisman) in its upper reaches near Birkenhead. Ngāpuhi call this harbour Te Wai-o-te-mate (the waters of death) because of the many struggles for control of the isthmus.

[UPDATE: Journal of the Polynesian Society 1925 - George Graham:

... or the mid-harbour rock Te Mata at Auckland, from which the Auckland Harbour is named, Wai-te-Mata. These were two of many famous tuahu where uruuruwhenua and other ceremonials were performed in those districts.
Since recording the above (in 1900) I have recently been shown by Mr. R. W. Firth a photo of a very similar columnar stone standing within the earthworks of the Korekore pa, Waitakerei ranges. -- UPDATE ENDS]

On the naming issue - and the articles to the entry seem to be by sometime NZ Herald redneck-baiter Rāwiri Taonui - Te Ara says:

Because many tribes have lived in Tāmaki, there are numerous explanations for the origin of its name. One tradition says that Tāmaki refers to the narrow neck of land between the Waitematā and Manukau harbours, and that Tāmaki was an ancestor whose daughter married one of the original ancestors, Toitehuatahi. Another says that Tāmaki was the son of the Taranaki ancestor Maruiwi. Southern Taranaki tribes say that Tāmaki refers to a line of chiefs descended from their ancestress Parehuia. Some believe the name comes from the ancestor Maki or from one of his daughters. Yet another tradition claims that it comes from the 18th-century Te Wai-o-Hua chief Kiwi Tāmaki. A Waikato tradition traces the name to Tāmaki-makau-rau, a woman chief who was the daughter of Te Huia and the Ngāti Te Ata chief Te Rangikiamata.

Variations of the name include Tāmakinui (great Tāmaki), Tāmaki-makau-rau (Tāmaki of a hundred lovers), and Tāmaki-herehere-ngā-waka (Tāmaki that binds many canoes).
Te Ara's Auckland entry:

The Ngāi Tai tribe, descended from the people of the Tainui canoe, settled in Maraetai. Other Tainui descendants were Te Kawerau-a-Maki. This group lived under forest cover in the Waitākeres and controlled land as far north as the Kaipara, across to Mahurangi and down to Takapuna. The Ngāti Te Ata tribe was based south of the Manukau at Waiuku. Along the coast from Whangaparāoa to the Thames estuary was Ngāti Paōa, a Hauraki tribe. The dominant power on the Tāmaki isthmus was Wai-o-Hua, a federation of tribes formed under Hua-O-Kaiwaka and linked to the Te Arawa tribe Ngā Oho.

From 1600 to 1750 the Tāmaki tribes terraced the volcanic cones, building pā (settlements behind protective palisades). Across the isthmus they developed 2,000 hectares of kūmara (sweet potato) gardens. At the peak of prosperity in 1750, the population numbered tens of thousands. It was pre-European New Zealand’s most wealthy and populous area.

From the early 18th century the Ngāti Pāoa people edged their way into the Hauraki Gulf and as far north as Mahurangi. Between 1740 and 1750 Ngāti Whātua-o-Kaipara moved south, invading the isthmus and killing Kiwi Tāmaki, paramount chief of Wai-o-Hua. They then took his last pā at Māngere.

The conquerors secured their dominance of the isthmus by intermarrying with Ngā Oho, descendants of the Wai-o-Hua. There followed a period of cautious peace in which Ngāti Pāoa’s conflict with Ngāpuhi tribes in the north made the Tāmaki tribes vulnerable to attack.

In 1820 the Ngāpuhi chief Hongi Hika acquired muskets, enabling him to attack the Tāmaki region. In 1821 Ngāpuhi destroyed the Ngāti Pāoa settlements, and later those of Te Kawerau-a-Maki. Apihai Te Kawau, chief of the Ngāti Whātua, abandoned the isthmus and took his people into exile.

When the French explorer Dumont D’Urville visited in 1827 he was startled to find the fertile isthmus depopulated. Groups sheltering in coastal settlements – Āwhitu, Waiuku, Maraetai and Port Waikato – attracted traders and missionaries to their areas.

When Ngāti Whātua cautiously returned to the Manukau about 1836 they kept away from Ngāpuhi traffic further north on the Tāmaki isthmus. Te Kawau’s fear of Ngāpuhi aggression was one reason he took the strategic step of inviting William Hobson – New Zealand’s first British governor – to site the colony’s capital on the isthmus in 1840.

Report of the Waitangi Tribunal on the Orakei Claim:

In evidence in the Supreme Court in 1978 the Commissioner of Crown Lands considered Orakei was not ancestral land of the Ngati Whatua for, according to his interpretation, ancestral land is that which was occupied by the various tribes from the time of the arrival of the canoes, a view said to have been confirmed by Mr B P Puriri, then District Officer of the
Department of Maori Affairs. We doubt very much that tribal boundaries were fixed following canoe landings in the manner contended, that the canoes arrived together, or that territories were any more certain than state boundaries in Europe over a similar period, (and European states are no less the ancestral lands of current occupants because of it).
[...]
There is not one person of Ngati Whatua who cannot link to the ancient Ngaoho occupation, that begins in the dawn of time, simply by reciting that person's line from Te Kawau.

The people of Orakei belong not only to the invading Te Taou line. The position is rather that by virtue of the Ngaoho connection, the ancestral entitlement of Ngati Whatua in Auckland predates the main canoes.