Wayne Brown walked into the Cordis ballroom on Saturday with the pecking order of the Auckland phone book on his mind. He wasn't making any phone calls, quite the opposite actually. The Auckland mayor was face-to-face with hundreds of Indian New Zealanders who had gathered to celebrate a milestone.  

“You have to go back to the 50s or 60s when Brown was a more popular name in Auckland phone book than Singh and Patel, and then you passed us," he announced from the lectern at the celebration marking 100 years of the New Zealand Indian Central Association (NZICA), the apex body of Indian diaspora organisations across New Zealand. 

"So it was us, Smith, Singh and Patel and the Browns at the top [earlier]," he said to a loud cheer and laughter from diaspora leaders. Among the guests seated around round tables before him was a person no stranger to the surname supremacy wars, New Zealand First's Winston Peters. His deputy Shane Jones is a bit queasy that Indian surnames are climbing the charts faster than some politicians' approval ratings.

In September last year, Jones reportedly rued that New Zealand was "changing irreversibly...the demography, the character and the make-up of society". He said the most common baby names had become "Singh, Patel" but "no one campaigned on it".

"[If you] want to change in a profound way the culture, the character, the make-up of your society, go and campaign on it," RNZ quoted him as saying.

In 2024, Singh topped the list of the most common family names registered for newborns in New Zealand for the seventh consecutive year, with more over 680 babies given that name. "Kaur follows closely in second place with 630 babies, while Smith rounds out the top three, with 300 babies sharing the family name," minister Brooke van Velden had said.

Just last month, Peters found himself explaining that his deputy “could have expressed himself better” when sharing his view on the potential immigration impacts of the India-New Zealand free trade agreement. 

"We are not going to be a dumping ground for people trying to come to New Zealand and set up New Delhi,” Jones had said, pointing out New Zealand didn't "need any more Uber drivers".

NZ First leader Winston Peters at the NZICA centenary celebrations in Auckland.

At the NZICA centenary celebrations in Auckland on February 28, 2026, Peters was more generous about Indian migrants who "have made an important contribution to New Zealand's economy and culture and civic life, as much as they have been small business owners and entrepreneurs, as doctors, teachers and public servants, as artists and innovators, as leaders in public office, and sports people representing New Zealand".

"Over the last century, there have been countless examples of prominent Indian New Zealanders and families," Peters said, mentioning some of the pioneers like the Bhana brothers, Sir Roger Bhatnagar, Dame Ranjna Patel, Sir Anand Satyanand and cricketers Ajaz Patel and Rachin Ravindra.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon with NZICA president Veer Khar at the event in Cordis, Auckland.

At the event, Brown used the baby-name leaderboard convo to pitch his new Auckland Innovation and Technology Alliance, the one that’s supposed to hustle deals with Bengaluru and Ahmedabad. “Well done with the government getting the free trade deal, but city-to-city trade is pretty important as well,” he said.

So if you’re keeping score at home, remember that surnames change, cricket survives and politics carries on, like the story of migration itself.