Mike Butler: Where not to drop your aitches

“H” or no “H”, what is the problem? The councillors of Wanganui/Whanganui all good and true on Friday voted 10 to 2 to support the name of their town having the “H”. A referendum in 2006 found that fewer than 3 per cent of residents wanted to change the spelling. Is this a case of yet another council being out of step with its constituents?

A quick look at history shows that settlers asked for the name "Wanganui" to replace the New Zealand Company name of Petre in a petition dated May 3, 1844, noting that the name “Petre” was “universally disliked”. (1)