The Badge
History of the District
The name ‘Otara ‘ was selected originally for the school to keep alive the name of the first school in this area. The name ‘Otara ‘ seems to have been attached to the land lying roughly within the boundaries Tamaki Inlet. It seems to have separated Papatoetoe from Otahuhu.
The first Otara School, after which this school was first named, was commenced in 1856 on the site of the present St John’s Presbyterian Church on the Great South Road near Hunters Corner. The cemetery there is still the Otara Cemetery and until 1907 or 1908 the church was called the Otara Presbyterian Church. When the school was shifted to a new building at the present Papatoetoe Central School on the corner of Great South Road and St George Street in 1884, it was still called the Otara School. The name was not changed to Papatoetoe School until 1889 through the Papatoetoe Road Board was established in 1868. The name Papatoetoe has gradually encroached on the name Otara with the naming of the railway station and with the growth of the borough. This Intermediate School’s name was changed to ‘Papatoetoe’ in 1967 to avoid confusion with the schools in the fast growing new area of Otara.
The word ‘Otara ‘ is made up of ‘O ‘ which means ‘the place of ‘ and ‘Tara ‘ the name of a Chief. The full name is O-Tara Te Irirangi. Tara Te Irirangi [which can be translated ‘Ray made visible in the sky’] was a chief of the Ngati-Tai tribe in the 18th Century. His lands extended from the Tamaki Inlet [then called Wai-o-Taiki] along the coast to the Wairoa River inland to Clevedon [Otau] and back to the end of the Tamaki Inlet.
A descendant of his, a chief also called Tara, was living at Umupuia, [the correct name of Duder’s Beach near Maraetai] in 1840, and helped John Logan Campbell. He was painted by G. F. Angas in 1844.