Talk:Tītore

Tītore or Tītere?
Kia ora everyone

I recently added an infobox for Tītore. The details within are referenced from sources within the article itself. I had previously decorated the article with a portrait entitled of Teeterree in 1818, whose unusual spelling derives from a period before the standardisation of the Latin script for Māori. But I am not sure that this man is the same man in the article. The issue is that, while Tītore would seem to be the same person as this "Teeterree" because of his ties to Hongi Hika, the article does not mention at all his trip to England in 1818 with Tuai, the Ngare Raumati diplomat. In 2017, Kura Kaa Jenkins and Alison Jones wrote about Tuai for the Journal of the Polynesian Society, in which they referred to a colleague of his called "Tītere".

"[Tuai] finally managed to get a passage to England on the brig HMS Kangaroo and another young man, Tītere (from Rangihoua), had persuaded Mar in Parramatta to pay for their passage to England. The Kangaroo left Jackson in April 1817. Tuai and Tītere were to stay with Marsden's colleague at the Church Missionary House in central London"

In February 1818, "Tītore", as described in this article, was approximately 42 or 43, while Tuai was born in 1797 and would have only been about 23. But in the article Māori language, it says that "Beginning in 1817, professor Samuel Lee of Cambridge University worked with the Ngāpuhi chief Tītore and his junior relative Tui (also known as Tuhi or Tupaea)" (Brownson, Ron (23 December 2010. "Outpost". Archived). That article gives both the name as "Tītore" and the lifespan as being "(1795?-1837)". Tītore of this article died in 1837, too, but most records give his age as 62.

I should also mention that Tuai's name was also interpreted as various different things. Jenkins and Jones say "Almost everyone he met spelled his differently.... different spellings [include] Te Tuhi and Tui. An old Ngapuhi account gives the name Tai [and] in unpublished primary sources, he is called Tohi, Toi, Toohe, Toui, Tuai, Tuaea, Tuaia, Tuhi, [and] Tui". So it wouldn't be unreasonable that, given the name of the painting, Tītore could be another case of this.

Are Tītore and Tītere who went to England the same person? We should gain consensus before keeping the image or adding information. Dhantegge (talk) 04:24, 22 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Philip Parkinson is emphatic that Tītere and Tītore were different men. Nurg (talk) 11:52, 29 May 2024 (UTC)