Tamaki, New Zealand

For the electorate, see Tāmaki (New Zealand electorate).

Panorama of St John's college, Tamaki, by Caroline Harriet Abraham: published in 1862 (was engraved by a sister of W.C. Cotton).

Tamaki is a small suburb of the city of Auckland, in the North Island of New Zealand. It is located in the east of the city, 11 kilometres from the city centre, by the banks of the estuarial Tamaki River, which is a southern arm of the Hauraki Gulf. The suburb is between the suburbs of Point England to the north and Panmure to the south.

Tamaki is under the local governance of the Auckland City Council. It is part of the much larger Tamaki parliamentary electorate.

According to the 2001 census, Tamaki has a population of 4263.

The eminent social anthropologist Sir Raymond Firth was born in Tamaki in 1901.

Suburb:	Tamaki
City:	Auckland City
Island:	North Island
Surrounded by  - to the north  - to the east  - to the south  - to the west	Point England Tamaki River Panmure Mount Wellington, Saint Johns Park

Volcano

To the west of the suburb is Mount Wellington, a 137-metre volcanic peak which is part of the Auckland Volcanic Field, and which was formed by an eruption around 9,000 years ago.

Related names

By a quirk of geographical naming, the suburb of East Tamaki is located several kilometres to the south of Tamaki because it takes its name from the fact that it is on the eastern side of the Tamaki River, rather than from its relationship to Tamaki.

The name Tamaki is of contested origin. It is an ancient Polynesian word for battle; it can also mean full of people, i.e., heavily populated - an ironic possibility given that the Maori name of the heavily populated Auckland isthmus in Maori is Tamaki-makau-rau. A third possible origin of the names is Ta-Maki, meaning successful attack by Maki, which was the name of a local tribal chief.