Friend in Māori: hoa, e hoa and best friend

The word for friend in Māori is hoa ‘friend’, and when you speak to a friend you call them e hoa ‘friend!’. Te Aka Māori Dictionary glosses hoa as “friend, companion, mate, partner, spouse, ally”, so the one word stretches from a schoolmate to a husband to an army’s allies. My friend is tōku hoa ‘my friend’, or taku hoa ‘my friend’, which is always correct; a close friend is hoa tāpui ‘close friend’; and friendship is whakahoahoa ‘friendship’. There is no fixed Māori phrase for best friend. This guide sets out each one with examples, the warmer ways to address a friend, and why the Māori word mate is the last thing to call one.

Updated 24 October 2026 · 9 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.

Friend in Māori at a glance

English	Māori	Note
friend, mate, companion	hoa	Also partner, spouse and ally.
hey friend! (to one person)	e hoa	The commonest form of address.
hey friends! hey guys!	e hoa mā	mā makes the address plural.
my friend	tōku hoa or taku hoa	Friends take the o form; taku takes no side.
my friends	ōku hoa or aku hoa	The noun does not change; the missing t is the plural.
a friend of mine	he hoa nōku	He hoa nōku a Mere. ‘Mere is a friend of mine.’
close friend	hoa tāpui	The nearest thing to best friend in Te Aka.
best friend	no fixed phrase	See below.
friendship	whakahoahoa, hoahoa	Both are also verbs.
to make friends with, befriend	whakahoa	Also takahoa.
workmate, colleague	hoamahi	Written as one word.
flatmate	hoanoho	Written as one word.
enemy	hoariri	Built on hoa as well.

Hoa: friend, companion, partner and ally

Hoa is wider than the English word friend. Te Aka’s first sense is “friend, companion, mate, partner, spouse, ally”, and its example is about allies: a 1915 newspaper report of 500 preparing to go to war to stand with ō rātau hoa Pākehā, “their Pākehā allies”. Which English word fits depends on the sentence, and a second word after hoa usually settles it.

Māori	Te Aka’s meaning
hoa rangatira	spouse, partner
hoa tāne	husband, male partner
hoa wahine	wife, female partner
hoa tākunekune	lover, partner
hoa moe māori	de facto partner
hoamahi	workmate, colleague
hoanoho	flatmate
hoa kaipakihi	business partner, business associate
hoa aropā	peer
hoa tāpui	close friend

The partner words, and the rest of the family, are in Māori family words; the ones used at a wedding are in Māori wedding words.

Hoa turns up on the other side too. An opponent is a hoa tautohe or a hoa kakari, an enemy is a hoariri or a hoa ngangare, and hoa whawhai, literally a fighting companion, is a word Te Aka gives two opposite meanings: “ally” and “enemy, foe”. Its examples show both: Ngāi Te Rangi defeated at Te Ranga in 1864 me ōna hoa whawhai, “and their allies”, and a warning to friends that kei te hāereere tō koutou hoa whawhai, “your enemy is moving”. The sentence, not the word, says which side someone is on.

E hoa: how to say “hey friend” in Māori

To speak to a friend, put e in front of hoa. Te Aka describes e as the particle used before names and terms of address when you are talking to someone, so e hoa is “friend!” in the way E Mere! is “Mere!”. Te Aka lists hoa itself as a term of address for a friend, companion, partner or spouse. It goes at the start or the end of almost anything:

Kia ora, e hoa. ‘Hi, friend.’
E hoa, kei te pēhea koe? ‘Hey friend, how are you?’
Aroha mai, e hoa. ‘Sorry, friend.’

Our own course calls e hoa the commonest form of address in the language, one that works for anybody you are on easy terms with, and gives it the same job as “mate” in New Zealand English: it softens what you are about to say. It also gives the limit. To somebody much older, or in a formal setting, e hoa is too casual; use it with friends and people your own age. The formal greetings, and what to say to an elder, are in Māori greetings.

E hoa mā: more than one friend

To address a group, add mā. After a term of address, Te Aka says, mā “merely indicates the plural”, and its own example of hoa is a call to a group: E hoa mā, kia kamakama, kua maoa ā tātou pēkana me ngā hēki!, which it translates “Hey guys, hurry up, our bacon and eggs are cooked!”

The same words can also be an exclamation. Te Aka records an idiom built from e, a term of address such as hoa, and an optional mā and second e, which with the right intonation shows surprise, disbelief, disappointment or support, and quotes it as a reply to bad football news: E hoa mā e!, “Good heavens!”

Other ways to address a friend

Te Aka records several more words used only for calling to a friend:

Māori	Te Aka’s note
e kare	dear, friend: usually an affectionate way to address a friend, but also used to attract attention
e tai	friend, for a man or a woman
e mara	a form of address to a friend in the north
e hika	friend, mate, to men and women, in the eastern dialect; on its own it is also an exclamation, “goodness me!”

Bro, cuz, sis and the Māori e tā are covered, with where they come from, in Māori slang.

My friend in Māori: tōku hoa or taku hoa?

“My friend” is tōku hoa. Māori has two kinds of possessive, an ā kind and an ō kind, and friends are spoken of with ō. If you would rather not choose, taku hoa uses the neutral word for my, which Te Aka says is not governed by the two categories, and is right whichever one a speaker would give hoa. How the two kinds work is explained in full in Māori possessives: tāku or tōku; here is what it means for hoa.

Ko tōku hoa tērā. ‘That over there is my friend.’
Ko taku hoa tēnei, ko Hēmi. ‘This is my friend, Hēmi.’
Kei te haere au me tōku hoa. ‘I’m going with my friend.’
Ki te whare o tōku hoa. ‘At my friend’s house.’
He tokomaha ōku hoa. ‘I have many friends.’
Kāore ōku hoa. ‘I have no friends.’

Hoa does not change in the plural. One friend is tōku hoa and several are ōku hoa, or aku hoa in the neutral form: dropping the t is the only sign. “The friends” is ngā hoa.

Te Aka’s examples agree with the course. Every one we read that puts a possessive with hoa uses an o form, such as ō rātau hoa, ōna hoa and hei hoa mōku, “as a companion for me”, or a neutral one, such as taku hoa and aku hoa. None uses ā.

A friend of mine

To say someone is a friend, without making them the friend, use he and nōku: He hoa nōku a Mere. ‘Mere is a friend of mine.’ Set it beside Ko Mere tōku hoa. ‘Mere is my friend.’, which picks her out as the one. The negative is just as useful: Ehara ia i tōku tuakana, he hoa nōku. ‘He is not my older brother, he is a friend of mine.’

Best friend and close friend in Māori

There is no fixed Māori phrase for best friend. Te Aka has no entry for it, and none for the phrases that circulate online as translations of it, such as hoa pūmau, hoa tata or hoa piri. What it does record is hoa tāpui ‘close friend’, with an example from 1875: Ko te hoa tapui o taua wahine, o Henarieta…, “The close friend of that woman, of Henrietta…”. Te Aka also records the stative hoahoa ‘be amiable, friendly’, and its example is two people who e noho hoahoa ana rāua tahi i a rāua ka kaumātua haere, who “remained close friends when they became elderly”.

One older citation uses hoa aroha. Te Aka has no entry for the phrase, but in an example from 1878 a writer who says he would never desert the people of his wife and children adds that ētahi o koutou he tino hoa aroha nōku, which Te Aka translates “some of you are dear friends of mine”.

Takatāpui: close friend, and today rainbow

Takatāpui once meant a close friend of the same gender. Te Aka gives that sense before the modern one, with an example from Biggs (1997) about Tūtānekai, of the story of Hinemoa and Tūtānekai, where he and his hoa takatāpui Tiki were “spiritually close, like older and younger brothers”. But Te Aka’s third sense is “lesbian, gay, homosexual”, and Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, names takatāpui as an umbrella term for people of diverse genders and sexualities. That is the sense a listener will hear today, so takatāpui is not the word for a best friend.

A friend in autumn

A proverb Te Aka records warns about the other kind of friend: Hoa piri ngahuru, taha kē raumati, “a friend in autumn but not in the summer”. Autumn was the harvest and summer was when the gardens had to be tended, so it is said of someone who is around in times of plenty and gone when there is work to do. Te Aka’s example for takahoa ‘companion, friend’ makes the opposite point, from 1884: Kei te aituātanga ka tino mōhiotia ngā takahoa, “Friends are best known in times of disaster.” More proverbs are in whakataukī.

Friendship and making friends in Māori

Māori	Te Aka’s meaning	Te Aka’s example
whakahoahoa	to make friends, be friendly; friendly; friendship	Ahakoa tana whakahoahoa atu ki ngā Pākehā… “Despite his friendship with the Pākehā…”
hoahoa	be amiable, friendly; friendship; also spouse	Nā tana hoahoa ki a Ngata rāua ko Te Kōti… “Her friendship with Ngata and Coates…”
whakahoa	to make a friend of, befriend, make friends with	I Nūhaka nei, ka whakahoa au ki tētahi kōtiro… “In Nūhaka I made friends with a girl…”
takahoa	to befriend; companion, friend	See the proverb above.
whakawhanaunga	to get to know one another, get along with, make friends	—

Whakahoa is hoa with the prefix whaka-, which Te Aka describes as “to cause something to happen, cause to be”. A wider word lies behind all of these: whanaungatanga, which Te Aka defines as kinship and a sense of family connection, and which it says “extends to others to whom one develops a close familial, friendship or reciprocal relationship”. It is one of the words in Māori words with no English equivalent, and its place among the values of tikanga is in what does tikanga mean?

Why you should not call a Māori friend “mate”

In te reo Māori, mate is not a friend. Te Aka’s first two senses are “be dead, deceased, killed” and “be sick, ill, ailing, unwell”. As a noun it is death, sickness, or misfortune, and it can also mean defeated, extinguished, in want of something, or deeply in love. It is also said differently: two syllables, ma-te, because every Māori vowel is sounded (see the pronunciation guide).

It is the word that opens the best-known haka of all: Ka mate! Ka mate! ‘Will I die! Will I die!’, explained line by line in Ka Mate haka. So in a Māori sentence, the friendly “mate” of New Zealand English is e hoa.

Where the accounts differ

Word	One reading	Another reading
hoa whawhai	Te Aka, first sense: ally.	Te Aka, second sense: enemy, foe. Only the sentence decides.
takatāpui	Te Aka, older sense: a close friend of the same gender.	Te Aka and Te Ara, today: lesbian, gay, and an umbrella term for rainbow communities.
best friend	Phrases offered online: hoa pūmau, hoa tata, hoa piri.	Te Aka: no entry for any of them; the nearest it records is hoa tāpui ‘close friend’.

From hoa to a conversation

Hoa is among the first nouns the free te reo Māori course teaches, in its lesson on ko sentences, and e hoa follows. The next words to learn are the people closest to you, in Māori family words, and the most common Māori words are listed in frequency order.