Why does this university want to bin Queen Victoria?

Spare a thought for New Zealand’s Victoria university. For years now, this Kiwi institution of higher learning has been pulling out all the stops to rid itself of its monarchial name. The events of recent weeks have made its mission much more difficult.

Victoria marks its 125^th anniversary this December. Few things are likely to have gladdened the hearts of the university’s bigwigs than if this year could have been the last in which it was saddled with her majesty’s imprimatur. The death of Queen Elizabeth — and the tidal wave of warm Antipodean feel it has brought about — can only have thrown yet another spanner in the works.

New Zealand has eight publicly funded universities, seven of which seem to quite like their names. Victoria doesn’t. It wants to be known as university of Wellington, after the capital city in which most of its 22,000 students live.

To date, the institution’s political overlords have been lukewarm to the idea, which is a bit surprising given the government of Jacinda Ardern’s usual enthusiasm for ‘change’.