Tāmaki is a small suburb of East Auckland, 11 kilometres from the Auckland CBD, in the North Island of New Zealand. It is located by the banks of the estuarial Tāmaki 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.
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Map of Tamaki, Auckland 1072, New Zealand
Tāmaki is under the local governance of Auckland Council. It is part of the much larger Tāmaki parliamentary electorate.
Tāmaki had a population of 4,263 at the 2001 census.
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 Tāmaki because it takes its name from the fact that it is on the eastern side of the Tāmaki River, rather than from its relationship to Tāmaki.
The name Tāmaki was the Māori name for the Auckland isthmus, and was later applied to the eastern part of early Auckland (towards the Tāmaki River), as in the name of the Tāmaki Road Board.
The name Tāmaki 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 Tāmaki-makau-rau. A third possible origin of the names is Tā-Maki, meaning successful attack by Maki, which was the name of a local tribal chief.