Waikikamukau (, as if saying "Why kick a moo cow") is a generic name for a small rural

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

or locality in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. New Zealanders use the name as a

placeholder name Placeholder names are words that can refer to things or people whose names do not exist, are tip of the tongue, temporarily forgotten, are not relevant to the salient point at hand, are to avoid stigmatization, are unknowable/unpredictable in ...

for "any town" or to denote a non-specific but remote rural town. It has a similar connotation to the

New Zealand slang New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...

Wop Wops and the Australian term

Woop Woop Woop Woop is an Australian and New Zealand term meaning a place that is a far distance from anything. Equivalent terms include "beyond the black stump" and "dingo woop woop" (also Australia), "the boondocks" (Southern United States) and "out in the ...

and other appellations such as the "

Boondocks The boondocks is an American expression from the Tagalog (Filipino) word ''bundók'' ("mountain"). It originally referred to a remote rural area, but now, is often applied to an out-of-the-way area considered backward and unsophisticated by c ...

" or "

Timbuktu Timbuktu ( ; french: Tombouctou; Koyra Chiini: ); tmh, label=Tuareg, script=Tfng, ⵜⵏⴱⴾⵜ, Tin Buqt a city in Mali, situated north of the Niger River. The town is the capital of the Tombouctou Region, one of the eight administrativ ...

". The name is a joking reference to the frequency of New Zealand place names starting with "Wai" (

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...

for water, and used in the names of many rivers and nearby towns). Waikikamukau is reputed to specifically refer to the town of

Waipukurau Waipukurau is the largest town in the Central Hawke's Bay District on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. It is located on the banks of the Tukituki River, 7 kilometres south of Waipawa and 50 kilometres southwest of Hastings. H ...

in the North Island. The origins are hazy but one account is that the American servicemen stationed in NZ during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

found it difficult to pronounce the place name and thus jokingly called it Waikikamukau. However the name has been in use at least since 1930. It was used as the name of a successful racehorse in the 1990s. Waikikamukau was also used as the setting for a

Nickelodeon Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television television channel, channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its List of assets owned by Param ...

telemovie, '' Rocket Power: Race Across New Zealand''.

References

Geography of New Zealand New Zealand culture Fictional populated places New Zealand slang Placeholder names Rural culture in Oceania {{NewZealand-stub

See also

References