Lake Hood Place Name Report
The report considered by the New Zealand Geographic Board Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa (NZGB) at its meeting on 27 March 2009.
- Lake Hood (new name)
South-east of Ashburton
General Background
The submitter is LINZ’s Customer Services, who are producing the new Topo50 maps scheduled for publication in September 2009. The proposal seeks to assign a new place name for a man made lake on the bend of the Ashburton River, to the south-east of Ashburton. The 70 hectare lake, constructed in 2000, is essentially an off-stream storage constructed over the original Ashburton River floodplain, and was developed solely for water sports activities such as fishing boating and water skiing1.
The submitter has consulted verbally with the New Zealand Police, and provided documentary evidence from the New Zealand Fire Service that Lake Hood appears as a common place name in their databases.
The submitter advises that it is important for safety reasons that the lake is officially named on the new maps, and has provided documentary evidence that Environment Canterbury is using Lake Hood in their publicity information, for example, Navigation Safety Bylaws.
Documentary evidence supporting the proposal has been supplied by the Ashburton District Council Lake Hood is owned and operated by the Ashburton Aquatic Charitable Trust (Inc), who advise that the lake was named in 2002 after the late Doug Hood in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the environment in Canterbury. The submitter has not provided biographical details of the late Doug Hood.
The feature is not located within a Conservation Area.
As the lake was only recently formed, there is no historical evidence of previous names for the lake feature, but there may be an original Māori name covering the area.
One other feature in New Zealand, Hood Glacier in Otago, has been gazetted as official through the NZGB Act (refer to NZ Gazette 1969(8), p.240). The Hood Glacier is named after Captain George Hood, one of the first to attempt to fly the Tasman in 1928.
There are other geographical features with the name ‘Hood’, which have not been gazetted as official through the NZGB Act but appear in the New Zealand Place Names Database (Archived), ie. they are ‘recorded’. They are not nearby and should not cause confusion as Lake Hood will be preceded by the geographic feature type.
Duplication:
| Hood Aerodrome | Wellington |
| Hoods Bay | Marlborough |
| Hoods Bush Reserve | Coalgate, Canterbury |
| Hoods Creek | Oamaru |
| Robin Hood Bay | Marlborough Banks Peninsula |
A number of streets and roads located around New Zealand are named ‘Hood’, but none are in the vicinity of this proposal.
Duplication:
| Hood Avenue | Pines Beach, Canterbury Upper Hutt |
| Hood Crescent | Arrowtown |
| Hood Place | New Plymouth |
| Hood Road | Kaipara District |
| Hood Street | Wellington, Christchurch, Wellsford, Rotorua, Wanganui, Dunedin, Hamilton, Hastings |
| Hoods Landing Road | Franklin District |
| Hoods | Road Methven |
The views of Ngāi Tahu may be brought to the Board’s meeting on 27 March 2009.
1 Ancold Bulletin (2003, Issue 24): Massey Electronic Library.
NZGB - Summary Report - Lake Hood- 2009-03-27.doc, for Meeting of 27 March 2009 LINZ file reference: GES-N15-07-09/74/01
