Whereas,
I am an unreformed and unashamed user of the place names I grew up with, regardless of the official blessings bestowed on what I conceive to be mere tokenism.
I have no objections to people calling the mountain either Mt Cook or Aoraki, or even Aorangi. I know what they mean and I'm happy for them to use any of the terms, but to me and to most of the people I associate with, it's still Mt Cook. No matter how much shorter it gets (yes, I spotted that one, Max).
I was in Parapram the day before yesterday. It's spelled "Paraparaumu", but everyone I know pronounces it "Parapram". Same as Piecock/Paekakariki.
It's not insulting, it's not intended to be. It's just the difference between the way two languages, coexisting in a confined space, have grown to accommodate each other. I think it was NickW who expressed it well - it sounds pretentious for an English speaker not of Italian origin to say "Firenze" rather than "Florence". I feel the same way about the thirty or forty places in New Zealand where the Maori name has not been supplanted, it has merely been anglicised.
FWIW
