Wānaka is known best today as a movie-grade ski-town - a place to include on your Lord of the Rings tour or the 'other place' that isn't Queenstown for big-city folk planning time on the slopes.

But in pre-European times it was known for something quite different - learning.

A new series of the RNZ podcast Nau Mai Town (ie know my town. Geddit?) launches today with an episode on Wānaka.

The series tours the motu and looks at the stories behind New Zealand's Māori place names - the origins, the people, and how names have changed over the years. This new season starts in Te Waipounamu, as host Justine Murray sees in Matariki from atop Treble Cone, about half an hour out of the township.

But as we often find in Nau Mai Town, the current name isn't the only name this town has had. What's more, there are two versions of where the current name comes from.

For several generations, Wānaka shared its name with a beautiful seaside town in Wales; or at least with a member of the noble family connected to it.

The township was surveyed in 1863 and initially called Pembroke in honour of Sidney Herbert, Baron Herbert of Lea, a son of the 11th Earl of Pembroke. Baron Herbert had been a British MP since 1832, and had served as Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for the Colonies. He'd also been a member of the Canterbury Association, which organised the creation and settlement of Christchurch.

But the original Māori name attached to the lake never really went away, and by 1940 trying to distinguish between lake and town became a sufficient headache that Pembroke was ditched in favour of the original name.

For several generations Wānaka shared its name with a beautiful seaside town in Wales; or at least with a member of the noble family connected to it. PHOTO RNZ / Tess Brunton

So where does Wānaka come from? Some say it stems from a local rangatira called Anake or Anaka. It's said the area was called 'the place of Anaka/e' or O Anaka/e. Say it out loud and it sounds almost like Wānaka.

But not so fast. Others say the word is an example of the local Kai Tahu dialect, which replaces the North Island "ng" with a "k". So Wānaka in the north would be pronounced wānanga.

That's a word most will recognise as meaning a place of learning - anything from a seminar to a university, as in Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. As Paulette Tamati Eliffe and Hana O'Regan tell us, the story behind that name pre-dates even Kai Tahu and speaks to the history of the area as a place where tamariki were sent to learn.

Find out which story is most likely to be accurate and the (small) role Selwyn Toogood plays in all this in the new season of Nau Mai Town, with host Justine Murray, as she travels Aotearoa talking to locals and helping us get to know the towns, then and now.

Later in the series we'll learn about Paihia, Taumarunui, and others. Or listen to earlier episodes about Timaru, Tolaga Bay, Rotorua and many more.