Aotearoa is a strange and changeable lady. In her youth, she didn’t take herself too seriously. New Zealand satirists A. K. Grant and Tom Scott, in their superb early 80s mock history of New Zealand The Paua and the Glory: the story of New Zealand's rise to international insignificance, amusingly speculated on the origin of “Aotearoa” …without being cancelled. (Their thesis was that, on arrival of the first Polynesian canoe on New Zealand shores, one of the Tānes instructed one of the Wāhines, “Out eh Aroha”.)
