Consonant clash

The New Zealand Geographic Board has announced the River City, Wanganui should be spelled Whanganui, after considering an application by Whanganui iwi, Te Runanga o Tupoho. This single letter has raised the ire of the city and divided the nation as it has moved from an innocuous spelling debate into a divisive issue at the heart of New Zealand race relations. Though it’s no Bombay to Mumbai, the local Maori tribe, which formally proposed the change, says it’s important to right a historic wrong made when the name was incorrectly recorded by 19th-century white settlers.