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Cocker, Salt, Johansson and Guttenbeil are just a few of the families that can be traced in the records.
The Tongan records were formerly held in the British Consulate in Nuku'alofa and were transferred to Wellington in 2006 when the Consulate closed down.
Special Collections manager Stephen Innes has had the Western Pacific Archives in his possession since 2002.
The records cover all aspects of colonial administration in the Western Pacific from 1877 to 1978.
Mr Innes was flabbergasted when he was told the Tongan records were being added to the Western Pacific Archives collection at the university.
"These records are only a very small part of that, but they're very important because they relate to births, deaths and marriages that were recorded in Tonga and we've had a lot of difficulty finding those records over the period that we've held the Western Pacific Archives here, so we're really delighted that they've come to the library finally."
Mr Innes says that despite the data being restricted to initial registrations of British subjects in Tonga, the information will still be useful for the Tongan community.
"They had to be British subjects in the official record, but nevertheless there is still land records for example for some countries, so they may be in there. They may not be registered in the formal registers, but they may well be covered by the records of that body."
British High Commissioner to New Zealand Jonathan Sinclair says the historical registers would spark an interest from all people with links to Tonga.
"People be they British, Pakeha, Tongan, Samoan are able to now look at these records and perhaps find a bit more about their ancestry and that's fantastic and if they didn't do this, they hadn't done this well, they wouldn't be able to do this today."
Mr Innes is impressed at how intact the pages of the records are.
"They date from 1874 and they've been rebound at least once and they've been attacked by worms, by book worms and the spine and the bindings have started to wear and tear and come away, but the actual paper and the records inside them is fine. A little bit fragile, but records of that date were made of really good paper."
Mr Sinclair agrees.
"It's fascinating to see the difference from what is today a very technical process or very online process to one where paper was king and these are meticulously recorded and it goes back to the 1800s and so you can't help but be impressed by the quality and the consistency of what went on, which we all benefit from today."
Although Tonga has been a constitutional monarchy since 1875, the Western Pacific High Commission governed parts of their administration, such as foreign affairs and that included registrations of British subjects.
