Wellington was named after Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington and victor of the Battle of Waterloo. The Duke's title comes from the town of Wellington in the English county of Somerset.
In M?ori, Wellington goes by three names. Te Whanga-nui-a-Tara refers to Wellington Harbour and means "the great harbour of Tara". P?neke is a transliteration of Port Nick, short for Port Nicholson (the city's central marae, the community supporting it and its kapa haka have the pseudo-tribal name of Ng?ti P?neke). Te Upoko-o-te-Ika-a-M?ui, meaning The Head of the Fish of M?ui (often shortened to Te Upoko-o-te-Ika), a traditional name for the southernmost part of the North Island, derives from the legend of the fishing up of the island by the demi-god M?ui.
European settlement began with the arrival of an advance party of the New Zealand Company on the ship Tory, on 20 September 1839, followed by 150 settlers on the Aurora on 22 January 1840. The settlers constructed their first homes at Petone (which they called Britannia for a time) on the flat area at the mouth of the Hutt River. When that proved swampy and flood-prone they transplanted the plans, which had been drawn without regard for the hilly terrain.
In 1865, Wellington became the capital city of New Zealand, replacing Auckland, where William Hobson had placed the capital in 1841. The Parliament of New Zealand had first met in Wellington on 7 July 1862, on a temporary basis, but Wellington did not become the official capital city for three more years. In November 1863, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Alfred Domett, places a resolution before Parliament (meeting in Auckland) that "... it has become necessary that the seat of government ... should be transferred to some suitable locality in Cook Strait [region]." Apparently, there had been some concerns that the more highly populated South Island (where the goldfields were located) would choose to form a separate colony in the British Empire
