West Eyreton is a small rural village in the Canterbury region of New Zealand's South Island. It is west of Kaiapoi and north-west of Eyreton and is named after Edward John Eyre, a 19th-century lieutenant governor of the South Island, then known as New Munster. In the 2001 New Zealand census the population was 1,146 (573 males and 573 females), an increase of 306 or 36.4% since the 1996 census.