Sky blue pink with a finny hanny border reader comments

A long time ago, I posted a piece on the potential origins of a Geordie riposte to unanswerable questions from children: "sky blue pink with a finny haddy border" (here). My grandparents moved from Gateshead to London in the 1930s, so for my mother to have known it so completely and transplanted this saying to Aotearoa New Zealand, I think it must date from the 1930s or earlier.

Since then I have had a number of people leave comments on that original post, detailing their local variances. I thought I would collect together some reader comments and views on the origins and local variants of this saying. They are many and varied, and I have decided to list them without editing here. In a follow up post, I will do some analysis on the comments. But first, the list :-)

• Iain C. replied to my original post, recalling their "mother coming out with it in the 50s and we where in Merseyside with no geordie connections. Strange how things got around" (27 December 2019; Young, 2017).
  
  
• Another user, Lesley W. (25 June 2023; Young, 2017) related "My father was from Newcastle, but my mum's family were from Southport, Lancs (now Merseyside) and she and my maternal grandparents are the ones who used the phrase 'sky blue pink with spots on and a finny addy border'. My grandparent's use of the phrase suggest it was definitely pre the 40s. Finny addy was there term for smoked haddock, or yellow fish". An interesting comment about the smoked haddock.
  
  
• I got a colour variant, a mondegreen, and a verbal shift from one anonymous user (6 February 2020; Young, 2017) who explained "My grandfather was from Scotland (1909-1989) and he used to say this to me as well except it was 'purple' and I never really knew what he was saying at the end with 'finny haddy'. I thought he was saying 'fin and haddie' or even 'thin and fattie'. But it was always the answer to an unimportant or unknown question; 'sky blue purple with a finny haddy border'. Another common quip was 'Haud yer wheesht!'. Also whenever it was pouring rain he was say 'Send 'er down, David; What comes down today won't come down tomorrow'. And of course he also used to riddle me 'Why is a cow? Because a vest has no sleeves'. Crackers, all of these!
  
  
• Another anonymous user explained two variants in their family (15 June 2020; Young, 2017) with "interesting that for my grandfather it was 'Sky blue pink with yellow dots', but for my husband [it was] 'sky blue pink with a finny Haddy border' and he comes from Liverpool. Dialectual changes and movement of people must have displaced this phrase and changed it somewhat, but in essen[c]e it remains the same".
  
  
• Commenter myfairhands (2 June 2021; Young, 2017) said "My Dad used to say this. He was born and bred in Liverpool. I thought he said finny anny. But it probably handy - as in haddock. He also used to say when surprised by something 'well I'll go to the foot of our stairs'; 'Off goes your head and on goes a cabbage' when we were naughty; And called us in from play with 'come in your mother wants her boots'. So another variant of haddock (an important income stream in the North) with a dropped 'h' and an 'handy' variant; and some lovely sayings (neither of which I have heard before).
  
  
• Another anonymous commenter (29 April 2022; Young, 2017) concurred: "Same saying for me too family from Liverpool +Hoylake i lived North wales on the border".
  
  
• Commenter Isadora (10 September 2021; Young, 2017) explained "My grandmother was from Liverp[o]ol and used this expression - she said 'finny addy border' but I assume that was laziness. Another of her sayings, uttered if we were slouching about doing nothing, was 'don't be standing about like a pilgarlick' This was often heard from her and we all thought she'd made it up. Then, Frank Muir presented it on 'Call my Bluff' - remember that? We, my sisters and I died laughing until he (Mr Muir) revealed it as the truth!! Archaic, it was apparently as it sounds a tablet or pill made from garlic - an original supplement, maybe a cut above snake oil. We were impressed even though the revelation further diminished the sense of her retort!" Now that is a fascinating view of our language history!
  
  
• Another anonymous commenter (26 November 2021; Young, 2017) said "My grandfather, from Birkenhead, used to say that sandy-grey russet was 'the colour of a sunburnt fart'". What a pearl!
  
  
• Another anonymous commenter (29 April 2022; Young, 2017) related "My Mum used to say this to us in the 50's. She'd say 'sky blue pink with a finny annie border' (at least that's what I think she said) and as children we never queried it or indeed understood what she meant. Just one of her many 'strange' sayings that I assume came from her parents. She had no connection with Gateshead area - lived in leafy Surrey". This is a widely travelled phrase when we consider I am in New Zealand. 
  
  
• Another anonymous commenter on the same day (29 April 2022; Young, 2017) noted "We used to say it in Liverpool 1956 to 1966. It was a rhyme in the playground". It must have had an appeal to children to be used in the playground.
  
  
• Another anonymous commenter (11 June 2022; Young, 2017) said "My Nan used to say this 'Sky blue pink with a finny addie border.' It was a deflective saying, but I have no idea what it meant! We lived in Birkenhead, Wirral, and I am now 57". So another northern version, this time with a dropped 'h', and from a user born in the 1960s (providing their age was a bonus!).
  
  
• Another anonymous commenter (20 July 2023; Young, 2017) took the time to explain this is was "A very common saying in Lancashire[:] if you think it through the sky at sunset is sky blue with pinkish glow and a finny handy (yellow) border if it his been a nice day, so perhaps original was just a real answer to a question that later got used as a non[-]answer as it is such a funny sounding phrase". Yes, all true. Interesting that this user also noted the "handy" variant.
  
  
• Another anonymous commenter (11 January 2024; Young, 2017) explained that their variant "from Liverpool is Dan dugady grey with a finny addy border" which is a pearl I have definitely not heard before. I wondered if this might have been a corruption of  "Ducati grey"? This user also noted that their age, being 67 at the time (likely now 68), which was helpful, as being born in the 1950s may help to date the phrase.
  
  
• Another anonymous commenter (10 April 2024; Young, 2017) said "I’m a Scouser and my Nan used to say sky blue pink with a Finny addy border when I asked a question she didn’t know the answer to or was uncomfortable to answer! She also used the term pilgarnock (mentioned earlier on this thread) when she considered someone was stupid!" I wondered if pillock might be a contraction of pilgarnock? Another time, perhaps.
  
  
• Another anonymous commenter (10 April 2024; Young, 2017) related that "In Aberdeen we used to say sky blue pink with a tartan border". Another variant!
  
  
• And yet another on the same day (10 April 2024; Young, 2017) explained "The saying [i]n Northern England was Sky Blue Pink with a Yellow Border and not Finni Addy". Another variant, this time with a dropped smoked haddock!
  
  
• Another anonymous commenter (17 April 2024; Young, 2017) explained "'Sky blue pink with a finny addy border' [came] from my nan - she was born in Liverpool in around 1915. Finny addy was smoked haddock and as others have said it was a 'mind your own business' reply to an annoying question. Another phrase from her 'Mind you own business and cook your own fish, and don't put your nose in my clean dish'. This was still being used in Liverpool in the 60s and was often abbreviated to 'Mind your own business and cook your own fish'". Another dropped 'h', yet the haddock remains!
  
  
• Another anonymous commenter (31 August 2024; Young, 2017) explained "This was a very common used phase in Liverpool throughout the war years and on into the 1960s. 'It can be sky blue pink with a Finny addy border for all I care' was a very common response to any question". An interesting add on with the "for all I care". A bit more dismissive, and less light-hearted.
  
  
• Another anonymous commenter (2 February 2025; Young, 2017) said they had "Just Googled Sky Blue Pink with a Finny Haddy Border and found this page. My parents who are mid 80's said this to us as kids and we lived in Wigan with no Liverpool origins. I am 60". So while the saying was common in the 1950s and 1960s, it was also in common usage with their parents generation. 
  
  
• Another anonymous commenter from further south (29 March 2025; Young, 2017) explained "In Manchester in the 1950's the saying was 'Sky Blue Pink with a Yellow border'"; again, a dropped smoked haddock.
  
  
• Commenter scousejones (24 September 2007; Ice-Maiden, 2007) said "when I was a child in the 1920s, a usual answer to the question, 'What colour is it?' would be, 'Sky-blue Pink with a Finny-Haddy border', Finny-Haddy being a smoked haddockfrom Findon in Scotland". 
  
  
• On the same day, commenter valerieb1254 (24 September 2007; Ice-Maiden, 2007) explained "What we used to say was.....Sky blue pink with yellow dots on. As for the colour of Sky-blue pink, I don't really know".
  
  
• Then commenter Aroundy (17 April 2024; Ice-Maiden, 2007) threw in a final pearl: "Sky blue pink shot with a carrot". 

I was wondering if the Finny Haddock from Findon in Scotland being yellow came first or second? Perhaps the sky blue pink with a yellow border came first; then the yellow finny 'addy came across the border, so it was a substitution for the yellow...?

Anyway. Some analysis to come later :-)

Sam

References:

Ice-Maiden. (2007, September 24). What colour?. The Answer Bank. https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Phrases-and-Sayings/Question459921.html

Young, S. (2017, January 2). Sky-blue pink with a Finny Haddy Border. https://www.samyoung.co.nz/2017/01/sky-blue-pink-with-finny-haddy-border.html

read more "Sky blue pink with a finny hanny border reader comments"

The social licence, part 1

Rather like a psychological contract (read more on that here), the "social licence to operate", or SLO, is what society gives to those organisations which operate within it. I tend to think of this in terms of predator and prey. We - the herd - grant a social licence allowing organisations - the predator - to prey upon the herd because in return it gives us something of value.

Like the two parallel processes of the psychological contract and the employment contract for individuals (Rousseau, 1989), an organisation needs their "government permit" alongside their SLO (Cooney, 2017, p. 198), and was used informally by industry for some time, but was formalised as the SLO by Cooney in a 1997 presentation (2017). The idea of the SLO arose from companies mining in Africa where part of the cost of doing business was that the local community allowed the mines to operate in their locale - and if the local communities didn't 'grant' the SLO, the community and workforce disruption would mean the operations were either unprofitable or were literally run out of town. Or, to use academese: "the ongoing acceptance of an organization’s operations by stakeholders – especially local community members and those capable of disrupting operations or limiting their profitability" – enable an organisation to continue to operate within a society (Breakey, 2023, p. 2).

Where monopolies are state-owned, those organisations appear to focus on branding as a stakeholder communication channel to show how they are meeting their SLO responsibilities; these organisations need societal, regulatory, and shareholder acceptance. They "signal that they are fulfilling their social function: not just that they are providing their customers with the best services and products, but also that they are looking after state resources" or effectively looking after the commons (Larsen, 2023, p. 59).

In New Zealand, a number of industries are in danger of their SLO being revoked: the forest industry because of pine slash taking out infrastructure in the alarming rainfalls we have had throughout the country in the past few years; our national carrier, AirNZ, as an effective monopoly, indulging in predatory pricing; the decimation of deep sea corals from benthic trawling; dairy giant Fonterra gouging locals for butter, milk and cheese prices while dairy pasture nitrate run-off has left 45% of New Zealand rivers too toxic for swimming; mining companies being currently offered operating permissions without appropriate environmental checks and balances (Brettkelley, 2025); and I could go on. There are many other examples of a growing impatience with predatory practices. The herd grows restless.

There are fashions in the SLO. Those that I personally suspect are on the way out - i.e. so have a lesser and lesser social licence for their continued operation - are tobacco companies; fast food outlets; ultra processed food companies. And since Covid, Governments. Bureaucracy. MLMs. Mining. Fossil fuel companies. Plastics. Consumer tat.

It is an interesting area of research. And something that organisations need to remain awake to.

Sam

References:

Breakey, H. (Ed.). Social Licence and Ethical Practice (Vol. 27). Emerald Publishing Limited. https://doi-org.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/10.1108/S1529-2096202327

Brettkelley, S. (2025, October 14). When social licence is revoked. Newsroom. https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/14/when-social-licence-is-revoked/

Cooney, J. (2017). Reflections on the 20th anniversary of the term ‘social licence’. Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law, 35, 197–200. https://doi.org/10.1080/02646811.2016.1269472

Larsen, F. (2023). Chapter 4 Findings: Understanding Modern Energy Brands. In Commodity Branding: A Qualitative Research Approach to Understanding Modern Energy Brands (pp. 45-129). Palgrave macmillan.

Rousseau, D. M. (1989). Psychological and implied contracts in organizations. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 2(2), 121–139. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01384942

read more "The social licence, part 1"

The Gartner Hype Cycle

Have you heard of the Gartner Hype Cycle? This model "describes the typical progression of the infiltration of new technologies into society (ColdFusion, 2025, 13:15). While I recognised the image when it was shown in the ColdFusion video (2025), I realised I had not been exposed to the model previously. I had assumed it was somehow related to the product life cycle. But no. Product/service visibility is mapped against maturity to estimate the amount of hype being generated from novelty and hope; as opposed to proven applications and returns (Dedehayir & Steinert, 2016; Prinsloo & Van Deventer, 2017). The features of the Gartner hype curve are the technology trigger, leading to a peak of "inflated expectations", which is followed by a trough of disillusionment; then, once we have got all the hype out of our system, we have a state of enlightenment, followed by a plateau of productivity (ColdFusion, 2025; Dedehayir & Steinert, 2016; Prinsloo & Van Deventer, 2017).

So why don't we hear what the model is for from the founder's own business (Gartner, 2022)?

With Gartner having at least 95 different hype cycle models, depending on what each product/service is, and what sector it is in, this provides excellent intel for all kinds of organisations. Each cycle depends on a range of issues, mapped below (Dedehayir & Steinert, 2016, p. 3):

From this cycle, we can see that there are many factors affecting the Innovation Trigger growth phase; as well as number of issues affecting the drop from the inflated peak to disillusionment. Then the steady restoration of fortunes to - basically - product maturity... as I think this is where the product visibility actually intersects with the product life cycle. 

This is very interesting!

Sam

References:

ColdFusion. (2025, October 1). Replacing Humans with AI is Going Horribly Wrong [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/QX1Xwzm9yHY

Dedehayir, O., & Steinert, M. (2016). The hype cycle model: A review and future directions. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 108, 28-41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.04.005

Gartner. (2022, March 25). Gartner Hype Cycles, Explained [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/jB1RDz9jaj0

Gartner. (2026). Gartner Hype Cycle. https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hype-cycle

Prinsloo, T., & Van Deventer, J. P. (2017, September). Using the Gartner Hype Cycle to evaluate the adoption of emerging technology trends in higher education–2013 to 2016. In international symposium on emerging technologies for education (pp. 49-57). Springer International Publishing.

read more "The Gartner Hype Cycle"

More on slide decks

When creating a slide deck for - say - a conference presentation, we put ALL the references that we cite in our notes, on each slide; which is called a multiple works citation (American Psychological Association, 2019). And the reason why we put the multiple works on the slide is because when we are presenting at our conference, we do not share our speaker notes with our audience. We only share our slides. Without our referenced script, if we didn't have a multiple works citation on each slide, the audience would have no idea of where and what our reference list connected to.

For example, the following image shows all the sources on the slide, and where they are embedded in the notes area:

If the multiple works citation wasn't on the slide, the audience would only have the Shakespeare citation. They would be effectively unaware of the other four sources drawn upon. So the multiple works citation is essential for our audience.

Further, we need to remember that our slides shouldn't be too text heavy. The example slide here has 34 words in the body of the slide - close to Tufte's maximum of 40 words per slide (2003). And it looks a bit crowded, even though it is under 40. The notes area contains 306 words of the speaker notes.

Why do we keep the text on the slides brief? We want the slides to anchor and support what we say; not to interfere with it. Luckily, if the slide text is short, because we read at roughly 250-300 wpm "much faster than spoken language understanding [while...] audiobooks are spoken at a rate of 140–180 wpm" (Brysbaert, 2019 p. 3) our audience will read in a fraction of time and be able to refocus on what we are saying. We don't want our audience to be distracted from what we are saying by reading the slides. Brysbaert also noted that "while we are listening to a person speaking, we simultaneously have an internal conversation preparing to make a response", which may also mean the audience may stop listening to the presentation (2019. p. 3).

So, to keep our audience focused on us, we put only simple signposting on each slide. If our slides look too crowded, then we trim - slash to the bone - and push our words into our script in the notes. We can get creative and use diagrams, images, and Ishikawa's fishbone model (FabianLange, 2008, read more here) instead.

We need to keep our slide decks short, focused, and provide a map back to our evidential base.

Sam

References:

American Psychological Association. (2019). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: The official guide to APA style (7th ed.). Author.

Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109(1), 104047, 1-30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047

FabianLange. (2008). ;Ishikawa fishbone diagram ;(Creative Commons 3.0) [image]. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ishikawa_Fishbone_Diagram.svg

Tufte, E. R. (2003). The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within. Graphics Press LLC.

read more "More on slide decks"

Who holds the power?

I was thinking about societal power, and how companies fit into that power structure... or, at times, dominate it. Why? Because we created in law an entity - the company - which has all the rights of a person, but few of the responsibilities. A business can buy property, take on debt, sign a contract, sell goods, hire people, pay tax, and limit its liability to the extent of the capital in the control of the organisation. While a company doesn't have to make profit, it must legally intend to make a profit: however, it has no legally binding conscience, morals, values or compassion (Achbar & Abbot, 2004).

A company is therefore a profit-making machine (Achbar & Abbot, 2004). While legislation requires it must act lawfully... what if it doesn't? This is where "no soul to be damned, no body to be kicked" (Coffee, 1981, p. 386) comes in: we lack an effective mechanism to punish the wrong-doing of these legal entities.

Further, when companies are taken to court to demand specific performance of them, the wheels of law grind very slowly, and, without that "soul to be damned" (Coffee, 1981, p. 386), attempts to prove senior staff complicity often fail (Ferguson, 2010; Gibney et al., 2005). This can mean that the powerful owners and shareholders of companies may remain largely untouched by catastrophe. Think Union Carbide in India (Wizevich, 2024); think Theranos (Gibney, 2019); think Enron (Gibney, 2005).

In New Zealand, to be in the top half, we have assets totalling just shy of $135k (Edmunds, 2025). That won't get most of us a house. To be in the top 10%, we need assets of a smidge over $1.2m. That will just get us a house, but it won't make us wealthy (Edmunds, 2025). The reason for that asset distribution is that most New Zealanders earn between $50 and $70k per annum (Money Hub, 2025).

To be really wealthy, to be in the top 1% of 20,000 earning "over $300,000" and "750 people earning over $1 million" each year (Money Hub, 2025), our assets will be over $4.7m (Edmunds, 2025). And excuse me for making a leap, but this group is most likely to contain those amongst us who remain untouched when 'big business' (which does, after all, harvest their wealth and power from society, by selling us services, ideas and essentials), treat the 99% with some level of disdain. Their organisations may be bankrupted to avoid the owners paying back the 99% who have made losses. Who appear to prove they have "no soul to be damned" (Coffee, 1981, p. 386).

I get a bit cross.

Sam

References:

Achbar, M. (Director), & Abbott, J. (Director) (2004). The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power [documentary film]. Big Picture Media Corporation.

Coffee, J. C. (1981). "No soul to damn: no body to kick": An unscandalized inquiry into the problem of corporate punishment. Michigan Law Review, 79(3), 386-459. https://doi.org/10.2307/1288201

Edmunds, S. (2025, October 1). What you need to be among New Zealand's richest people. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/574634/what-you-need-to-be-among-new-zealand-s-richest-people

Ferguson, C. (Director, Writer), with Beck, C. (Writer), & Bolt, A. (Writer). (2010). Inside Job [documentary film]. 2929 Entertainment/HDNet Films/Jigsaw Productions.

Gibney, A. (Director, Writer), with Elkind, P. (Writer), & McLean, B. (Writer). (2005). The Smartest Guys in the Room [documentary film]. Sony Pictures Classics.

Gibney, A. (Director & Producer), with Deeter, J., & Edeiken, E. (Producers). (2019). The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley [documentary film]. Jigsaw Productions/HBO Documentary Films.

Money Hub. (2025, June 30). New Zealand Wage and Salary Distributions for Individuals. https://www.moneyhub.co.nz/wage-salary-distributions.html

Wizevich, E. (2024, December 3). The World’s Deadliest Industrial Disaster Exposed 500,000 People to Toxic Gas and Claimed Thousands of Lives. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-worlds-deadliest-industrial-disaster-exposed-500000-people-to-toxic-gas-and-claimed-thousands-of-lives-180985434/

read more "Who holds the power?"

DARVO

I was aware of the following behaviours in betrayal trauma theory: "Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender" individually (Freyd, 1997, p. 29), but I was unaware of the collective as the acronym "DARVO" itself until recently. Coined by research psychologist Jennifer Freyd (1997), exploring what happens in betrayal trauma when we start looking at abuser behaviour, and how they gaslight their victims - even though gaslighting was not really a named behaviour at the time (Oxford Languages, 2018; Stern, 2008).

How DARVO may unfold is that the victim goes to explain to the abuser how they feel, and the response from the abuser is:

• Deny: over-the-top "indignant[,] self-righteous, and overly stated" (p. 29) denial of events as the victim thinks they happened (effectively gaslighting; Stern, 2008)
• Attack: now the abuser turns on the victim with type of "you always...", possibly including ridicule, bullying, "threats of law suits, overt and covert attacks" (p. 29) and focusing on emotional argument rather than facts
• Reverse Victim: "the offender rapidly creates the impression that the abuser is the wronged one" (p. 30), allowing the abuser an external locus of control and so avoiding responsibility for their own actions
• Reverse Offender: "the victim or concerned observer is [now] the offender" (p. 30). 

So how can we reclaim ourselves? Some method of recording what happened seems to be a most suggested solution, such as keeping a very secret diary; recording conversations; or having conversations with a reliable third party. Any or all of these tools will help to shine a light for the victim, and provide improved clarity and a more balanced perspective.

Interestingly, twenty five years ago Freyd warned that research in this evolving field needed to "focus not only on psychological response to betrayal, but also on the psychology of the betrayer and the larger system supporting offenders" (p. 29). I am not sure we are there yet, but perhaps, thanks to Freyd's insight into the stages of this type of manipulation (1997), we are now much more aware of how others may attempt to use their power over us.

And that can give us the power to reframe reality.

Sam

References:

Freyd, J. J. (1997). II. Violations of Power, Adaptive Blindness and Betrayal Trauma Theory. Feminism & Psychology, 7(1), 22–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353597071004

Oxford Languages. (2018). Word of the Year 2018: Shortlist. https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2018-shortlist/

Stern, R. (2008). The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life. Harmony/Rodale.

read more "DARVO"

Creating a dropdown list in an Excel sheet, Part 1

I am a member of an organisation which requires me to log my PD each year, using a web portal. However, the web portal itself has made the logging a tedious task. I wanted to create a simpler, less costly alternative for PD logging that I could share with the organisation, and reduce member effort.

However, as I was creating my log sheet, I realised that having some drop downs would simplify matters. By crikey, using drop down lists saves time and effort; not to mention standardising data entry, and so improving the quality of the resulting information.

This post will walk through setting up a simple drop down selection list in an Excel spreadsheet - not in a form, but a database format. Excel only lets us select one item from a drop down, unless we get into VB code (more on that in Part 2, later; Bansal, 2025).

Initially, I did quite a bit of work. I created an ".xlm" - macro enabled - workbook containing my working materials: a log sheet for my data entry database, put all my lists on another sheet with named ranges, then hid that sheet (and locked the cells on it in case anyone unhid it).

Once I had ensured I had my log sheet fields were ticketty boo, and had instructions embedded as notes at the top of each column, I set auto filters, view panes, and formatted the columns. Then I was ready!

Are we sitting comfortably? Then I will begin ;-)

1. Open our spreadsheet and click in the first cell we want our drop down list to appear in
2. To to the Data ribbon, Data Tools, and click on the Data Validation icon to open the Data Validation dialogue box
3. On the default tab, "Settings", go to Allow and select "List"; then in the Source field, we can key in our list items, separated by commas
4. Click OK.

We now have a simple dropdown list. To change any items, we just click in the cell, go back to data validation, and amend the Source field items (Stratvert, 2025; Wong, 2024).

But what if we already have a list which is a named range, as I did? Let's say that named range is "Competencies", and:

1. Go back to the Data Tools Tab | Data Validation
2. Click into the Source field and key "=Competencies"
3. Click OK.

Now we have can amend our list, not back in Data Validation, but in our named range on the hidden sheet whenever we need to. So long as we expand our named range, we can add as many items as we require.

Even better, we can create drop down lists with a multiple selection function - see Part 2 to find out how to do that!

Sam

References:

Bansal, S. (2025, June 12). Creating Multiple Selection Drop-Downs in Excel (It's Possible - Here's How). YouTube/TrumpExcel. https://youtu.be/KoTKTwx7cA0

Stratvert, K. (2025, February 4). How to Create a Drop-Down List in Excel (2025 Tutorial). YouTube. https://youtu.be/CaD4-5UAK0I

Wong, C. (2024, November 11). 2 Simple Ways to Create an Excel Drop Down List. SpreadsheetPoint. https://spreadsheetpoint.com/excel/drop-down-list/

read more "Creating a dropdown list in an Excel sheet, Part 1"

The customer service journey

How do we know that the customer service journey is good? It goes smoothly and seamlessly. We look online for the business, find an entry and we can book a table, a ticket, an appointment, a click-and-collect: the bookings process guides us through detailing our requirements and we are taken to payment and we are done. Or we next receive a calendar appointment that we can add to our diary to remind us that we have our session coming up. And then we are done. It is so easy that what might have taken an hour last century is done in seconds in this one. Bricks and mortar retailers have largely adapted to a hybrid environment, putting the power in their customer's hands with online bookings platforms, email, instant messaging, answer services, chat bots and smart payments (Lin & Cheng, 2025). This is called omnichannel marketing, where "customer touchpoints [...] occur through multiple channels[: ] face-to-face, phone, online, [and] mobile apps" (Babin & Harris, 2022, p. 107).

I ran into a complicated 20th century customer service journey recently, and it reminded me of just how smooth most customer service journeys are today. I needed to book an appointment for a family member at a local franchise business in the nearest small town, so I went to book online as I live 35 mins away on a good day; 45 on a not-so-good day. However, I was unable to find an online booking service for the entire franchise, let alone for the local branch.

OK. So I searched for a business email so I could email a request. Easy. Except there was no online email address that I could find. Anywhere.

Right. So this would need to be old school. I searched for the phone number, found one online, in two places (who uses a phone number?!). This was a retail business, and it was Saturday morning, so rang them, thinking they would probably be open. But there was no reply - no answer service, nothing. Just that ringing, on and on. Just in case it was a manual answer service, and the machine was already busy, I rang again. But I got the same result. OK, perhaps the business wasn’t open on the weekends. I would try during the week instead.

On Monday, I called again, and got no answer, and no answerphone message. Never mind omnichannel (Lin & Cheng, 2025), this place was not even mono-channel.

Gritting my teeth, and not feeling full of familial cheer, on Tuesday I got in the car and drove to the business. It was a not-so-good day, and took 45 minutes, due to two sets of stop/go roadworks and a transporter carrying a double-lane-wide shed being moved on the highway (hilarious). I arrived at the business was staggered to see the storefront had been gutted. There is no signage in the windows to say where the business has moved to. I entered the worksite and asked builders doing the fit out where the business had moved to, and they didn’t know either. It looked like business had gone OUT of business. 

What was worse was that, as a customer myself as well as my other family member, I had received no communication that the business was closing, or moving, or temporarily closing and moving. I was in the dark.

I thought about going to a similar business which was just over the road. But, I was on an errand for a family member. I knew there was another franchise another half hour further away, so I called them - despite thinking that this wouldn't get me anywhere as I assumed that the two businesses were run independently. But they don't appear to be franchises: it sounds like they may just be separate branches (but I am still unsure). I was told that the business nearest me was moving to a new location, but would be closed for three months (three MONTHS!). The staff appear to be working in the other branch for now. 

All in all it took me six goes to get in touch with them. If I hadn't been doing this for a family member, I wouldn't have made a special trip, and I would have gone elsewhere on finding the business closed. Most customers will not try more than two or three times. 

Wow. This was a classic missed opportunity to advise customers what was happening. They could have gone old school and simply had a phone answer or service/message stating "please contact the X branch on xxx-xxx-xxxx, as this branch will be reopening in new premises in xxx on ..." and not even taking messages. That might have cost them $30 a month at business rates (and they probably could have negotiated much less than that). Or just as easily, they could have forwarded their branch phone to the other branch. 

For just a few cents, they could have put a relocation notice on the old store front, and left the shop outfitters a brief statement - or a few flyers - to share with any customers asking questions. Or they could have negotiated with the new business to stick a flyer box on the window of the old premises to hold flyers until the new business was open. 

In addition, also at very low cost, they could have put a relocation notice on the two sites where I found their phone number (and perhaps updating the contact details to other branch temporarily).

They could have invested a little more, and have someone in the business create a short script, then paid a school leaver to email everyone the business had an email address for; text everyone who has a cellphone number listed; and call everyone on a landline who hadn't yet been contacted.

And they should definitely look at getting an online bookings service, to put the power in the hands of the customers. 

But the story gets a bit worse. I needed to get some paperwork to them from my family member, so needed the other branch email address. They carefully read out a quite complex email address which was all numbers, unrelated words and a domain name and a country unrelated to the actual name of the business and its location. We treble-checked it. It seemed to me to be a B2B mail address, not a C2B. Why on earth hadn't this been rerouted to an appropriate business domain with a clear address by their IT people? Even info@business.co.nz would have been better than the jumble that I carefully recorded and read back. I could see why the email address was not normally shared with customers: it was not fit for purpose. We are 26 years into the 21st century - email is not new technology! I got my first email address in 1992; over a generation ago.

And it turned out the other branch had given me the email address of the closed branch: and it bounced. I had to call back to ask if there was another email address. Apparently the mailbox was full 🤦🏼‍♀️. I got another, similar email, and we went through the treble-checking again. I finally got the email sent.

Then when I went to pay for the service that was to be provided, I needed to pay a deposit. I asked for their banking details, but the business does not have bank transfer facilities or any online payment channels. I could either spend two hours there and back in the car to manually use a credit or debit card, or give them the details over the phone. It was - of course - the phone. 

This business, if they don't get their act together, are going to be no more in fairly short order. All that investment in their new premises will be pointless when considering the erosion of the client base. They need to urgently expand their communication channels, until they too are an omnichannel business. And that will hopefully mean that their customer service journey is delightful, not a series of - in the words of the old woman to the Knight from the Canterbury Tales (Chaucer, 1400, l. 1000) - "you can't get there from here"'s.

Sam

References:

Babin, B. J., & Harris, E. G. (2022). CB Consumer Behaviour (9th ed.). Cengage Canada.

Lyrics Translate. (2026). The Wife of Bath's Tale [from G. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales]. https://lyricstranslate.com/en/geoffrey-chaucer-wife-baths-tale-lyrics.html

Lin, S. W., & Cheng, K. T. (2025). Exploring the Impact of Omnichannel Service Attributes on Consumer Well-Being Across the Customer Journey. SSRN. Advance online publication, 1-33. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.538245

read more "The customer service journey"

Can we assume that US tests fit New Zealanders?

The population of New Zealand is quite diverse (Massey University, 2026), and I think we like to think of ourselves as being a very diverse country. Statistics from 2023 show that our ethnic percentages were 68% NZ Europeans; 18% Māori; 17% Asians; 9% Pasifika; and 2% "Middle Eastern, Latin American, and African (MELAA)” (Massey University, 2026). Interestingly, if we compare ourselves with the population of the US, Americans are more diverse than we are, with 62% Europeans; 1% American Indian; 6% Asian people; 19% others; and 12% African Americans (US Census Bureau, 2021). We can see by the pie charts accompanying this post, that - at a quick glance - the USA's population profile looks similar to Aotearoa.

But only at a quick glance. Yes, both populations contain roughly two thirds European peoples, but the US has a greater number and range of the 'other' nationalities, along with a longer shared history. I was staggered to see that only 1% of the US population is American Indian, compared to New Zealand with far more Māori and Pasifika people, lending New Zealand a very different cultural make-up (Fischer, 2012; Kennedy, 2001). Only 14% of US citizens were born elsewhere (Daftari, 2024); in Aotearoa close to 30% of our citizens were born offshore (Statistics New Zealand, 2024). I wonder if it is migration which makes our society feel more vibrant, even though, going by the pie charts, Aotearoa is less diverse than America.

So why am I exploring this? Well, there are very few home-grown career assessments - CareerEQ (2026) is one, but I think I am correct in saying that has sprung from a number of offshore instruments. So when New Zealand career practitioners want to use an instrument with a client, we can nearly guarantee that we will be using one designed and normalised in the US. Just to provide some scale, around 4000 assessment tools have been evaluated by Buros - a not-for-profit independent test review centre at the University of Nevada (read more here; 2026) - since the 1930s. While I do not have hard evidence, I would think that close to 99% of them would have been developed in the USA. Few instruments are likely to have been normalised for use in New Zealand: the USA has 340m people; we have 5m. These numbers clearly show there is little gain for the companies creating the instruments. 

Why does that matter? Well, when using US-normalised career assessments in New Zealand, we might feel that – providing tests have been scrutinised and independently tested – they will be accurate (Zunker & Osborn, 2016). And that, as long as we consider test norms, reliability, and validity (Zunker & Osborn, 2016), and follow our codes of ethics (CATE, 2025; CDANZ, 2016), any testing we do for our clients should be valid and reliable.

But we know that the US population is not identical to ours (Massey University, 2025; US Census Bureau, 2021). And New Zealand is without a national independent, organisation like Buros who could to evaluate and certify any tests we created here, or who could normalise the test results of those US instruments used here to be sure they would fit our people (Young, 2022). And that may mean that tests created in the USA may not be such a good cultural fit for New Zealanders.

We practitioners must remain cautious in using tests created elsewhere; to only use them as a general lens for our client to view themselves with, but not as an accurate measure.

Sam

References:

Buros. (2026). What does the Buros Center for Testing do?. https://buros.org/resources/faq/

CareerEQ. (2026). Home. https://www.careereq.nz/

CATE. (2025). Code of Ethics. Career and Transition Educators. https://www.cate.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/CATE-Code-of-Ethics.pdf

CDANZ. (2016). Code of Ethics. Career Development Association of New Zealand. https://cdanz.org.nz/ModularPage?Action=View&ModularPage_id=26

Daftari, A. (2024, September 12). Percentage of Foreign-Born Residents in US Hits Highest Level Since 1910. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/percentage-foreign-born-residents-us-highest-level-1952874

Fischer, D. H. (2012). Fairness and freedom: a history of two open societies, New Zealand and the United States. Oxford University Press.

Kennedy, J. C. (2008). Leadership and Culture in New Zealand. In J. S. Chhokar, F. C. Brodbeck, R. J. House, (Eds.), Culture and Leadership Across the World: The GLOBE Book of In-depth Studies of 25 Societies (pp. 397-429). Psychology Press.

Massey University. (2026). Ethnic Profile [Environmental Health Intelligence New Zealand (EHINZ)]. https://www.ehinz.ac.nz/indicators/population-vulnerability/ethnic-profile

Osborn, D. S., & Zunker, V. G. (2016). Using Assessment Results for Career Development (9th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Statistics New Zealand. (2024, October 3). Census results reflect Aotearoa New Zealand’s diversity. https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/census-results-reflect-aotearoa-new-zealands-diversity/

US Census Bureau (2021, August 12). Race and Ethnicity in the United States: 2010 Census and 2020 Census. https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/race-and-ethnicity-in-the-united-state-2010-and-2020-census.html

Young, S. (2022). Culturally appropriate assessment considerations. https://www.samyoung.co.nz/2022/08/culturally-appropriate-assessment.html

read more "Can we assume that US tests fit New Zealanders?"

Catchphrases ride again!

Already it is time for another lot of catchphrases. Having written about these before (here), I continue to record those items I stumbled across since my last update.

Ah: the old NZI add. The Aussies are always stealing New Zealand icons, remember; so, to avoid people "stealing your stuff" we need to be insured (Phlashman, 2007, 0:23). This one has been used in various butchered forms in our family, but usually just "someone's always stealing your stuff".

Then,  from 1975 on, there is the Australian/New Zealand Telethon jingle, "Thank you very much for your kind donation" (Nostalgia Duck, 2018), and - as the first Telethon producer was shipped in from Perth (Perry, 1992; Tennant, 2013) - that was how the Aussie jingle was absorbed into New Zealand culture. Telethon TV ratings in Aotearoa sometimes "exceeded 70 per cent of the population" with per capita donations [in] 1978" reaching NZD$3m on a population of three million people, gaining entry into the Guinness Book of Records (Perry, 1992, p. 18). An accidental recent reminder when hearing a British Roses chocolates ad, where they had ...er ...repurposed the Telethon jingle which has become ubiquitous in the UK, with the Brits not realising its Antipodean roots (Business Education Resources, 2022, 9.46). 

Most Kiwis would be utterly sure that the KFC cartoon ad - "The cows and the sheep and the birds and the horses were mooing and baaing in and whistling and neighing; having lunch in the sun, while Hugo and I were having none, in the back seat, we sat: getting thinner..." (eat4freeatkfc, 2010) - was a Kiwi ad. But while we all knew the words to "Hugo Said You Go", it was in fact created by Aussie ad house, Zap Productions, and used in Australia (New Zealand on Screen, 2026a).

The New Zealand Milk Promotion Council, to the tune of Grieg's Morning Mood (Op 23, from Peer Gynt), advertised the white gold to us all, with "Morning girls!" "Where are we going?" "Milking. With Murray" (New Zealand on Screen, 2026b). And woe-betide any family friends called Murray. They were regaled with "Where are we going?" in a bovine voice to the refrain of "Milking. With Murray", which seemed to never get old... to us.

I have no idea why the Chef pet food ad refrain, "Snowy, Tiger, Jellimeat for dinner!" stuck in our collective family consciousness. But it did. And it is how we would announce mealtimes in our family. There is some confusion in general as to whether the names are "Snowy, Tiger", or "Joey, Tiger" (New Zealand 1980s memories, 2025); but in our family it was definitely assumed that this was "Snowy" and "Tiger". Hmm. And as Chef advertising tended to go for common pet names, white cats tend to be called "Snowy"; it seems more likely that the name was/is "Snowy".

Then there was "Well, I think we've done enough for a Mallowpuff" from the Griffin's biscuit ad (DigitaliseMe, 2022, 0:31). We often had done enough, we felt ;-)

Sam

References:

Business Education Resources. (2022, December 9). Secret World Of Christmas Chocolate S02E06 [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/QDa3QpxlFxQ?si=3f0QBRLIgVE-uKSl

DigitaliseMe. (2022, October 31). Mallowpuffs 1993 Nz Ad [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/PZ1yOguHLSs

eat4freeatkfc. (2010, June 17). Kentucky Fried Chicken Commercial - Hugo & Holly [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/0YtAVIGq1ko

New Zealand 1980s memories and 1990s Memories's post [sic]. (2025, January 29). Meeeoooow [Facebook]. https://www.facebook.com/nz80s/posts/meeeoooow/1037464791750870/

New Zealand On Screen. (2026a). Hugo and Holly - Kentucky Fried Chicken: Commercial (Full Length) – 1975. https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/kfc-hugo-and-holly

New Zealand On Screen. (2026b). Till the Cows Come Home: Commercial (Full Length) – 1981. https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/till-the-cows-come-home-1981

Nostalgia Duck (2018, March 29). Telethon NZ - Thank You Very Much For Your Kind Donation [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/SaWkfmmmjDQ

Perry, N. (1994). The Dominion of Signs: Television, advertising and other New Zealand fictions. Auckland University Press.

Phlashman. (2007, February 1). Someone always wants to steal your stuff!!! [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Pn_AfVS0IWY

Tennant, M. (2013). Fun and fundraising: the selling of charity in New Zealand's past. Social History, 38(1), 46-65. https://doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2013.755390

read more "Catchphrases ride again!"

The power of his voice

The horror in the film, Gaslight (Cukor, 1944), really stuck in my Mother's memory: she spoke often about it, and watched the film with me, so I was familiar with the plot when the term "gaslighting" was a runner up word of the year (Oxford Languages, 2018). Defined as "The action of manipulating someone by psychological means into accepting a false depiction of reality or doubting their own sanity" (Oxford Languages, 2018), gaslighting is very hard to counter.

Last year I watched a clip about a reader (Jonathan, 2025) who was encountering The Lord of the Rings for the first time, and who vlogged his thoughts on the books as he went (First Timers, 2025). And when he got to the Wizard Gandalf bearding the captive Saruman in Orthanc, Jonathan felt that Saruman was gaslighting everyone in the party, with Gandalf's approach being a potential antidote for Saruman's gaslighting: "Beware of his voice!" (Tolkien, 1954, p. 752) Gandalf warns those who will accompany him.

The company goes to Orthanc, summons Saruman, and: 

"Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves" (p. 754).

Saruman works through the company, tempting, seeking out individual weaknesses, looking for a way out. At last, not having deceived Gimli, Eomer or Theoden, Saruman tries to have Gandalf enter Orthanc, who responds with humour:

"Gandalf laughed. The fantasy vanished like a puff of smoke. ‘Saruman, Saruman!’ said Gandalf still laughing. ‘Saruman, you missed your path in life. You should have been the king’s jester and earned your bread, and stripes too, by mimicking his counsellors. Ah me!’ he paused, getting the better of his mirth. ‘Understand one another? I fear I am beyond your comprehension. But you, Saruman, I understand now too well. I keep a clearer memory of your arguments, and deeds, than you suppose. When last I visited you, you were the jailor of Mordor, and there I was to be sent. Nay, the guest who has escaped from the roof, will think twice before he comes back in by the door" (p. 759).

Then Gandalf is merciful to Saruman, saying if he comes down, he is free to go. But Saruman is imprisoned by his own poison (Tolkien, 1954).

Despite having read LOTR many times, I had not thought of Saruman's oratory techniques of divide and conquer as gaslighting, but I think Jonathan has called it well (2025; First Timers, 2025). 

But to counter gaslighting, we need a company of friends around us - to divide the gaslighter's attention - in order to beard a gaslighter in their lair. We need have emotional distance and back ourselves. We need to keep our head; to focus on the facts and to trust our memory; to respond with genuine humour; and to be merciful. 

We have to know that the flickering of the light is real.

Sam

References:

First Timers. (2025, June 12). This is Tolkien's SOLVE for Gaslighting and Manipulation [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/WL0aneHoIvY

Jonathan. (2025). About First Time Readers. Substack. https://firsttimereaders.substack.com/about

Oxford Languages. (2018). Word of the Year 2018: Shortlist. https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2018-shortlist/

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954). The Two Towers: Being the second part of The Lord of the Rings. Allen & Unwin.

Cukor, G. (Director). (1944). Gaslight [film]. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

read more "The power of his voice"

Projected international population change

If you have not yet watched the documentary by Shaw (2025), Birthgap, I strongly recommend it. I felt it connected many disparate elements for me in understanding why so many of us are not having children.

For population stability, our replacement rate needs to be 2.1. However, with replacement rates at 1.50, the UK is well under that (Economics Help UK, 2024, 1:15), and quite similar to the population replacement rate in Aotearoa New Zealand, at 1.52 (Spoonley, 2024). Further, the UK replacement rate is projected to drop to 1.2 by 2050, leaving one person working for every retiree (Economics Help UK, 2024, 5:18). Crikey. Imagine the impact of having only one taxpayer for each retired person!

There are a number of drivers attributed to our population reduction: the cost of raising children; the cost of housing; access to family planning; the increasing percentage of women in the workforce; and climate change (Economics Help UK, 2024; BBC, 2025). Additionally, market research indicates that our stated drivers - such as finance - may not really be survey participants' 'real' reasons: often what we attribute our choices to may be masked by finer, complex, societal nuances. For example, the documentary (Shaw, 2025) showed what a big player global crises are in young people either getting into relationships, or postponing parenthood, by illustrating the number of Japanese who postponed having children due to the oil shocks of the mid-1970s. A similar drop in birthrate followed the global financial crisis of 2007 (Shaw, 2025, 21:09), and - as I understand it - has followed the Covid-19 pandemic (Winkler-Dworak et al., 2024).

As well as the global shocks, culture is another likely factor, where mothers "must be prepared to sacrifice [themselves] and [their] self-interests and selfish desires" (Símonardóttir, 2024, p. 470) in order to have a family, with the pressure of excellence meaning "Inhuman stress is placed on people, especially mothers" (p. 471). And perhaps that should read "inhumane". 

I was particularly struck by how many men in the documentary seemingly indulged in magical thinking, that they still had plenty of time to get married, despite the fact that they were already in their late 30s (Shaw, 2025, an example at 1:07:00). Additionally, education is both expensive AND necessary for our children to be successful in a modern world, delaying our ability to be parents until our own educational investment/opportunity cost has generated a return.

Declining fertility is not often mentioned in other sources (Economics Help UK, 2024), however, Shaw tackles it, discovering what he calls the "vitality curve", where the intersection of new mothers and fathers by their age shows that as the age of first child increases, the fewer children are had by the parents overall (2025, 1:02:52). Really, this intersectionality should not be a surprise, but it seems to show that decisions to postpone parenthood may mean we really cannot have it all.

The most striking aspect of the documentary is our apparent individual powerlessness to reverse this trend (Shaw, 2025). This will take a whole-of-society approach, and I worry that we have little political will to do that... even more so because those of us who are older are still voting, and who is going to vote themselves out of their own 'well-earned' retirement?

Are we self-less enough?

Sam

References:

BBC News. (2025, August 12). How will falling birth rates affect the global economy? | BBC News [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/goVElusmeac

Economics Help UK. (2024, August 5). Why UK Population Is Set to Fall Much Faster Than Forecast [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/I5kcbEK-qAc

Shaw, S. J. (Writer, Director, Producer). (2025, September 19). Birthgap [documentary film, Torch Pictures]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/m2GeVG0XYTc

Símonardóttir, S. (2024). “Unless I could be like the typical dad”: Exploring parenthood through the perspective of the voluntarily childfree. Acta Sociologica, 67(4), 463-477. https://doi.org/10.1177/00016993241260608

Spoonley, P. (2024, May 27). NZ is changing faster than the census can keep up – the 4 big trends to watch. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/517937/nz-is-changing-faster-than-the-census-can-keep-up-the-4-big-trends-to-watch

Winkler-Dworak, M., Zeman, K., & Sobotka, T. (2024). Birth rate decline in the later phase of the COVID-19 pandemic: the role of policy interventions, vaccination programmes, and economic uncertainty. Human Reproduction Open, 2024(3), hoae052. https://doi.org/10.1093/hropen/hoae052

read more "Projected international population change"

How to source a Whakataukī

A student contacted me, wanting to use a Whakataukī (effectively a Māori 'proverb', but the meaning is more 'sharing of a cultural treasure' than something as prosaic as a folk saying) in an assignment, but had found two versions, with two different translations.

The first they found on the Umbrella Learning site, which read "E hara taku toa I te toa takitahi, he toa takitini" (2025), and was translated as "My strength is not as an individual, but as a collective"; the second from Inspiring Communities (2018), "Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari kē he toa takitini", and translated as "My success should not be bestowed onto me alone, it was not individual success but the success of a collective".

Neither of the sources the student had found struck me as being particularly expert. So I suggested that the student do a GoogleScholar search for each of the two versions of the quote, putting each Whakataukī in double quote marks, so the exact text string was sought each time (i.e. "E hara taku toa I te toa takitahi, he toa takitini" and "Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari kē he toa takitini")​ and see what they could find. The reason I suggested a GoogleScholar search is because any sources they found - books or articles - are more likely to be peer-reviewed - so are therefore more reliable, verifiable, valid and, theoretically, more accurate. I wanted them to find a sound source where the interpretation was robust; or, even more important for a Whakataukī, a source with mana. With gravitas.

If they found nothing, I suggested they repeat both searches in their favourite search engine, and see if they could at least find more of a consensus on both the Māori language version and the English translation, and would hopefully find a somewhat more reliable source. 

Luckily, GoogleScholar turned up a great example, complete with appropriate diacriticals: 

"Ēhara tāku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini" from a paper by Quigan et al. (2021, p. 283), with the translation provided, "My strength is not mine alone, but that of many" (p. 284).

Even better, the source of this saying was explained as being from the "Pāterangi of Ngāti Kahungunu, who maintained that collective effort of many was necessary for the completion of any task" (p. 284). That suited my student's uses nicely.

It is always worth looking for where something comes from. 

Sam

References:

Inspiring Communities. (2018). Whakatauki information sheet. https://inspiringcommunities.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Inspiring-Communities--Whakatauki-information-sheet.pdf

Quigan, E. K., Gaffney, J. S., & Si’ilata, R. (2021). Ēhara tāku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini: the power of a collective. Kōtuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online, 16(2), 283-306. https://doi.org/10.1080/1177083X.2021.1920434

Umbrella Learning. (2025). Introduction to Te Whare Tapa Whā. https://learning.umbrella.org.nz/enrollments/283188040/page/1064978659

read more "How to source a Whakataukī"