Condolences in Māori, and what moe mai rā means

Condolences in Māori go two ways at once: you speak to the person who has died, and you send your love to the family they leave. Moe mai rā ‘rest now’ is said to the one who has died; to the family you say Aroha nui ki a koe ‘much love to you’, or Aroha nui ki a koutou ‘much love to you all’ to the whole whānau. Getting the direction right matters more than anything else on this page: “moe mai rā” said to a grieving friend is addressed to the wrong person. This guide explains what moe mai rā means word by word, the other farewells you will read, short sympathy messages for a card or a text, how to address someone who has died by name or by relationship, two sayings used at a death, and what happens at a tangihanga ‘funeral’.

Updated 20 October 2026 · 11 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Māori examples play Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice made by Te Hiku Media from recordings of native speakers.

Condolences in Māori: the short version

Māori	English	Said to
Moe mai rā.	Rest now.	The person who has died.
Haere atu rā.	Farewell; go on your way.	The person who has died.
Aroha nui ki a koe.	Much love to you.	One grieving person.
Aroha nui ki a koutou.	Much love to you all.	The family, three or more people.
Ka nui te aroha ki a koe me tō whānau.	Great love to you and your family.	A friend and their family.
Kia kaha.	Be strong.	The family, or anyone grieving.
Aroha nui	Much love	A sign-off, above your name.

The first two are farewells and belong to the person who has died. The rest are for the living. The course teaches the same split in the lesson where these phrases first appear, and gives the same warning: moe mai rā is addressed to the one who has died, and saying it to the family is the wrong direction.

What does moe mai rā mean?

Moe mai rā is three words, and each is in Te Aka Māori Dictionary:

Word	Meaning (Te Aka)	In moe mai rā
moe	to sleep, close the eyes, dream; also, in a separate sense, to die, dead	sleep, rest
mai	this way: points towards the speaker, or towards whoever is central to what is being said	towards us, the ones speaking
rā	over there, yonder: not near the speaker or the listener, a distance in space or in time	there, away from us

So, word for word, it is something like sleep, (towards us), there. English has no neat equivalent, which is why translations differ: the course gives rest now, and a literal rendering is sleep there. It is close in feeling to rest in peace, but it is not a translation of it: it is spoken to the person, not about them. Moe here is the ordinary word for sleep, the one in Kei te moe te pēpi ‘the baby is sleeping’, and Te Aka also records it in the sense to die, dead.

The same pair of little words ends other farewells. Noho ora mai rā ‘stay well’ is a sign-off for a letter between the living, and it is explained in Māori greetings. In both, the two particles come in the order Te Aka describes: the directional mai first, then the locative rā.

Why the dead are spoken to

At a tangihanga, Te Ara explains, speeches, calls and laments have long been addressed to the dead in the second person, as if the person lying before the mourners were hearing each farewell. Today, it says, poroporoaki ‘farewell speeches’ are still delivered to the person as if they were alive, because the wairua ‘spirit’ is believed to remain with the body for some time. Te Aka says the same in its entry for poroporoaki, and adds that these eulogies are full of metaphor, allusions to tribal connections and places, and are hard to translate fully into English. That is why moe mai rā, like every farewell on this page, speaks to the person rather than about them.

Rest in peace in Māori: the farewells you will read

Te Aka has no entry for rest in peace. What people actually write, in tributes and death notices, is a farewell addressed to the person. These are the ones this guide could find in a dictionary or a published tribute:

Māori	Word for word	Where it is attested
Moe mai rā	sleep, towards us, there	The course (lesson 182); Te Papa’s tribute to Piri Sciascia (2020); the University of Waikato on Professor Martin Thrupp (2024).
Okioki pai	rest well	Te Papa’s tribute: Okioki pai ki roto i ngā ringaringa o te Kaihanga ‘rest well in the hands of the Creator’.
Moe mārire mai	sleep peacefully, towards us	Te Papa’s tribute, which ends with it. Mārire is peacefully, quietly, gently in Te Aka.
E moe, e moe, takoto mai rā	sleep, sleep, lie there	Te Papa’s tribute. Takoto is to lie down.
Takoto mai	lie (there, before us)	Te Aka’s example under haere rā, from a 1906 farewell, translates Takoto mai, e koro as “Lie in state, sir”.
Haere atu rā	go away (from us), there	Te Aka gives haere as farewell and quotes “Haere! Haere! Haere!”; its entry for kui quotes a 1994 tribute to an elderly woman ending haere rā, haere atu rā.

Okioki is the everyday word for rest or pause, and Te Aka’s own example of it is about the dead: a leader who rests at the Muruika cemetery beside his father. Haere atu rā is the same goodbye as haere rā, said to someone leaving, with atu ‘away’ pointing away from the speaker; Te Aka’s 1906 example ends a farewell to a dead chief with “Depart! Farewell!”

This is how the opening of Te Papa’s tribute to Piri Sciascia reads, exactly as the museum published it. Te Papa gives no English for it; the glosses are built from Te Aka, word by word:

Māori (Te Papa, 2020)	Word for word
Moe mai rā e te rangatira.	Rest now, chief.
Okioki pai ki roto i ngā ringaringa o te Kaihanga.	Rest well in the hands of the Creator.
Hoki atu ki te taha o ōu mātua tūpuna e tatari ana mōu.	Return to the side of your parents and ancestors, who are waiting for you.
E moe, e moe, takoto mai rā.	Sleep, sleep, lie there.

Addressing the person who has died

A farewell usually names the person it is said to, with the little word e in front. Te Aka describes e as the particle used when addressing someone: before names of one long vowel or two short ones, with terms of address, and with nouns used as terms of address. Its own example is E te rangatira, he mihi nui ki a koe ‘Oh chief, a great greeting to you’. The family words themselves are set out in Māori family words.

Farewell	Said to	Source
Moe mai rā, e koro.	a grandfather or elderly man	Te Aka gives koro as a term of address to an older man, and its 1906 farewell example uses e koro.
Moe mai rā, e kui.	a grandmother or elderly woman	Te Aka gives kui as a term of address to an older woman; its 1994 example farewells one with e kui, haere rā.
Moe mai rā, e te rangatira.	a chief or respected leader	Te Papa (2020) and the University of Waikato (2024).
Moe mai rā, e hoa.	a friend	Hoa is friend, and Te Aka’s examples address a friend as e hoa. The farewell is built from its rule for e.
Moe mai rā, e pāpā.	a dad, or an uncle	Te Aka gives pāpā as father, uncle, dad. The form is built from its rule for e rather than quoted from a tribute.
Moe mai rā, e Piri.	a person by name	Te Papa’s tribute addresses Piri Sciascia as E Piri. Te Aka’s rule puts e only before short names, of one long vowel or two short ones.

The surest choice is whatever the family called the person in life. If they called their grandfather koro or their mother māmā, those are the words to use. For an uncle there is no special form to learn: Te Aka records pāpā for an uncle as well as a father, as the family words guide notes.

Sympathy messages in Māori for a card or a text

A sympathy card goes to the living, so it uses aroha ‘love, compassion, sympathy’, not moe mai rā. Te Aka’s meanings for aroha include sympathy, compassion and empathy, as well as love, which is why it carries a condolence on its own. Each message below is built from patterns the course teaches: Aroha nui ki a koutou from its lesson on condoling, Ka nui te … ki a … from Ka nui te mihi ki a koutou ‘warm greetings to you all’, and me tō whānau ‘and your family’ from its early lessons. Change koe (one person) to kōrua for two and koutou for three or more.

To a friend

Kia ora e hoa,
I’m so sorry. I’m thinking of you.
Aroha nui ki a koe.
Nā Hine

To a friend who has lost a parent

Kia ora e Mere,
I was so sad to hear about your dad. He was always kind to me.
Ka nui te aroha ki a koe me tō whānau.
Kia kaha.
Aroha nui, nā Hone

To a family that has lost a grandparent or an uncle

E te whānau, tēnā koutou,
We were so sorry to hear of your loss. He was loved by everyone who knew him.
Aroha nui ki a koutou katoa.
Nā Tama rāua ko Ana

On a tribute post or a memorial page

Here, and only here, the farewell to the person who has died belongs: Moe mai rā, e koro. followed, if you like, by a line to the family, Aroha nui ki te whānau ‘much love to the family’.

Do not write aroha mai for “I’m sorry for your loss”. Te Aka gives aroha mai as an apology: sorry, I’m sorry, my apologies. Sympathy is aroha sent to someone: aroha nui ki a koe.
Ka aroha is how sad. Te Aka lists it as an idiom of sympathy, disappointment or regret, with the example how sad for the widow and their four children, but notes that it can also be sarcastic, so in a card the warmer aroha nui is safer.
Aroha nui is two words. Te Aka gives it as much love, with deep affection, often used to sign off letters to friends, and says the one-word spelling should more correctly be two.

For the other ways to open and close a message, including nāku noa, nā for a formal letter and ngā mihi, see Māori greetings and sign-offs. Kia kaha has a guide of its own: what kia kaha means. Words for grief and sadness themselves, such as pōuri, are in Māori words for feelings.

Whakataukī said at a death

Two whakataukī are associated with the death of someone of standing, and both are explained, with their sources and versions, in whakataukī: Māori proverbs. Te Ara says that Kua hinga te tōtara i Te Waonui-a-Tāne ‘the tōtara tree has fallen in Tāne’s great forest’ is commonly recited when news of a death is conveyed, and that it means someone of mana, of great importance to the tribe, has died. The University of Waikato’s 2024 tribute pairs it with the farewell: Kua hinga te tōtara o Te Waonui a Tāne; moe mai rā, e te rangatira. The second, Ka ngaro he tētēkura, ka whakaete mai he tētēkura ‘as one fern frond disappears, another thrusts upwards’, is given by Te Aka as a saying about chiefs who die being replaced by younger leaders: it looks forward as well as back.

What happens at a tangihanga

A tangihanga, often called a tangi, is the enduring Māori ceremony of mourning, in Te Ara’s words; tangi also means to weep. Te Aka calls it one of the most important institutions in Māori society. What follows is the general pattern Te Ara and Te Aka describe. Every marae has its own protocols, and Te Ara’s best advice is to ask the local people what they expect.

The body comes home. It is brought onto the marae with the whānau pani ‘bereaved family’ and usually lies in an open coffin. Te Ara says a tangi often takes about three days, on a marae, or in a hall or a home.
Visitors are welcomed on. Groups of visitors arrive over those days and are called on and welcomed with speeches and song; the order of a welcome is explained in what happens at a pōwhiri. Their speakers farewell the dead and greet the living.
The family stays beside the body. The role of the whānau pani is to mourn, Te Ara says, and someone should remain with the tūpāpaku ‘body of the person who has died’ at all times. The hosts do the cooking and the hosting so that the family does not have to.
The last night. Te Aka describes a pō mihimihi on the night before the burial, when people celebrate the person’s life with informal speeches and songs.
The burial. On the final day there is usually a service, then the burial at the urupā ‘cemetery’. People wash their hands as they leave, Te Ara says, to remove tapu, and the house of the person who has died is cleared with karakia. A hākari ‘feast’ ends the tangihanga.
Afterwards. About a year later the headstone is unveiled at a hura kōhatu. Relatives may also take the person’s memory, represented by a photograph, to people who could not attend, in a kawe mate.

If you are going to a tangihanga

Dress formally. Te Ara’s marae etiquette singles out tangihanga.
Arrive early and wait to be called on. You do not just walk onto a marae, Te Ara says, and it is impolite to arrive once a welcome is under way.
Bring a koha ‘gift, contribution’. The University of Auckland’s koha policy lists tangihanga, and koha to the whānau pani during a tangihanga, among the occasions where it is appropriate, and says no fixed amount is stated or expected. Te Aka also records the custom of giving a koha quietly, in person, to a member of the bereaved family (kōkohu).
Greet the family. At the end of the welcome, Te Ara says, visitors shake hands and hongi ‘press noses’ with the hosts.
Wash your hands after greeting the bereaved family and farewelling the tūpāpaku, and after leaving the urupā. Water is provided.
Expect grief to be open. Te Ara quotes Rawinia Higgins and John Moorfield: Māori discourage people from concealing their emotions, and expressing grief openly is regarded as therapeutic for everyone there.

Many women and chief mourners wear pare kawakawa ‘wreaths of kawakawa leaves’ on their heads, because greenery is the traditional symbol of death, Te Aka explains. The buildings of the marae where all this happens, including the house where the body lies, are described in the parts of a marae, and the karakia you may hear before and after speeches in karakia for meetings.

Going further

Aroha, moe, haere, whānau and the possessive tō are early words in our own free te reo Māori course, and its lesson on congratulating and condoling teaches Moe mai rā and Aroha nui ki a koutou side by side, with Papa Reo’s native-speaker voice.