Māori family words: whānau, tamariki, mokopuna, kuia

Family in Māori is whānau. A parent is matua and parents are mātua; mum is māmā or whaea and dad is pāpā. A child is tamaiti and children are tamariki; a grandchild is mokopuna. A grandmother or elderly woman is kuia, a grandfather koroua or koro, and ancestors are tūpuna or tīpuna. Brothers and sisters are where Māori parts company with English: there are four words, and which one is right depends on who is speaking.

Updated 7 October 2026 · 11 min read

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The Māori words for family members

Each word here is given as Te Aka Māori Dictionary defines it. Where a word has a plural of its own, it is in brackets.

English	Māori	Notes
family, extended family	whānau	Also to be born.
relative	whanaunga	Any relation, kin.
parent, father	matua (mātua)	Also used for an uncle.
dad, father	pāpā	Also used for an uncle.
mum, mother	māmā	A loanword from English.
mother, aunt	whaea	Some iwi say whāea for more than one.
aunt	whaea kēkē	The specific word.
uncle	matua kēkē	Te Aka also gives it for an aunt.
grandparent, ancestor	tupuna (tūpuna), tipuna (tīpuna)	Western and eastern dialect forms.
grandmother, elderly woman	kuia	Also a female elder.
grandfather, elderly man	koroua	Also a granduncle.
grandad, grandpa	koro	Used to address an older man.
granny	karani	A loanword from English granny.
elder	kaumātua	A person of status within the whānau.
child	tamaiti (tamariki)	Two different words, not one changing.
baby	pēpi	A loanword from English.
son, boy, nephew	tama
daughter, girl	tamāhine
niece, nephew	irāmutu
grandchild	mokopuna	Also any descendant.
grandchild (when speaking to them)	moko	Short for mokopuna.
spouse, partner	hoa rangatira
husband, man	tāne
wife, woman	wahine (wāhine)
son-in-law, daughter-in-law	hunaonga
mother-in-law, father-in-law	hungarei

There is no single word for brother or sister in that table, and that is not an oversight. They come next.

Brother and sister in Māori: tuakana, teina, tuahine, tungāne

Māori names a sibling by the relationship between the two of you, and two things decide the word: whether they are the same sex as you, and, if they are, whether they are older or younger.

tuakana: an older sibling of the same sex. A man’s older brother, a woman’s older sister.
teina: a younger sibling of the same sex. A man’s younger brother, a woman’s younger sister.
tuahine: a man’s sister, older or younger.
tungāne: a woman’s brother, older or younger.

	A man says	A woman says
older brother	tuakana	tungāne
younger brother	teina	tungāne
older sister	tuahine	tuakana
younger sister	tuahine	teina

Read down a column and the pattern is plain. Age only matters between siblings of the same sex. Across the sexes there is one word each way, whoever was born first. Te Ara, the encyclopedia of New Zealand, describes it the same way: a younger or older female sibling of a male is a tuahine, and a younger or older male sibling of a female is a tungāne.

Three siblings, four words

Take three siblings: Hine, the eldest, then her brother Hone, then Mere, the youngest. Hone is the same person throughout, and yet:

Who is speaking	About	The word
Hine	Mere, her younger sister	teina
Mere	Hine, her older sister	tuakana
Hine	Hone, her younger brother	tungāne
Mere	Hone, her older brother	tungāne
Hone	Hine, his older sister	tuahine
Hone	Mere, his younger sister	tuahine

Both sisters call Hone their tungāne, although one is older than him and one younger. Had Hone a younger brother, he would be that boy’s tuakana: the word belongs to the pair, not to the person. In a sentence it reads like this:

Māori	Meaning
tōku tuakana	my older brother (said by a man), my older sister (said by a woman)
tōku tuahine	my sister (said by a man)
tōku tungāne	my brother (said by a woman)
Ko tōku tuahine tēnei.	This is my sister (said by a man).
Ka kōrero a Mere ki tōna tungāne.	Mere talks to her brother.

English has nothing like this. Other languages split siblings by age — Mandarin has separate words for an older and a younger brother — but in English a brother is a brother whoever is talking. It is the kind of distinction collected in words that don’t exist in English, built into the most ordinary words in the language.

Three more words complete the set. The eldest child of a family is the mātāmua and the youngest the pōtiki, and you will also meet taina, which Te Aka and Te Ara both give alongside teina with the same meaning. Plurals lengthen a vowel: tuākana, tēina and tuāhine.

Cousins are tuakana and teina too

The same four words cover cousins of your own generation. Te Aka’s entries say so directly: a tungāne is a woman’s brother or male cousin, a tuahine a man’s sister or female cousin, and a tuakana is also a cousin of the same sex from a more senior branch of the family, a teina one from a junior line.

That last part is where cousins differ from siblings. Between brothers or sisters, senior means born first. Between cousins, Te Aka’s definitions follow the branch of the family, not the cousins’ own ages. Te Ara explains the idea behind it: seniority by birth was expressed through the tuakana–teina relationship, a person senior by birth to his brothers or cousins was tuakana, and the most senior family descended through the first-born. The same relationship scales up to whole groups. Te Ara’s example is that Ngāti Porou acknowledge Te Whānau-a-Apanui as the tuakana, because they descend from an older ancestral line.

So tuakana can be translated older brother, older sister, senior cousin or, in a school, prefect, which is another of its senses in Te Aka. What stays the same is the relationship: the senior of a pair.

Whānau, hapū and iwi

Whānau is family, and Te Aka defines it as the extended family, the primary economic unit of traditional Māori society. A hapū is a kinship group or subtribe made up of a number of whānau descended from a common ancestor, and usually named after that ancestor. An iwi is the larger kinship group, tribe or nation, often descended from a common ancestor and associated with a distinct territory. Te Ara reports how early anthropologists described the 18th-century whānau: the lowest of three tiers, with hapū in the middle and iwi at the top. It adds that treating them as a fixed ladder, with iwi at the top, is at odds with tradition, in which a whānau could also be a hapū: Te Whānau-a-Apanui is an iwi.

Each of the three words has a second meaning in the dictionary. Whānau is also to be born, hapū pregnant and iwi bone or strength.

The wider whānau

In English, family usually means parents and children. Te Ara notes that whānau can mean that, or much wider: the same person may count mum, dad, grandparents, brothers and sisters as their whānau on one occasion, and add great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews and grandchildren on another. It also cites the anthropologist Joan Metge’s distinction between whakapapa-based whānau, joined by descent, and kaupapa-based whānau, people who come together for a common purpose. Te Aka makes the same point about modern use: the word sometimes includes people with no kinship tie to the rest of the group.

Te Ara’s examples include a pan-tribal organisation, schools’ whānau reo classes and the whānau rooms many hospitals have, and Kia ora e te whānau is a normal way to greet a group of colleagues (see Māori greetings). Te Aka also lists the word as a familiar way to address a number of people.

Parents, aunts and uncles

Matua is a parent or father, and mātua, with a macron, is parents. Everyday speech uses pāpā for dad and māmā for mum; Te Aka marks māmā as a loanword. Whaea is mother, and you will also hear kōkā, which Te Aka gives as the eastern dialect word for mother or aunty. Older and more formal still are hākui, mother or elderly woman, and hākoro, father or elderly man.

The parent words reach sideways to your parents’ siblings. Te Aka defines matua as father, parent or uncle, pāpā as father, uncle or dad, and whaea as mother, aunt or aunty, and quotes the sentence Te Whaaki is an uncle to him with pāpā for uncle. When you need to be specific, whaea kēkē is aunt and matua kēkē uncle. The children of your brothers and sisters are your irāmutu, nieces and nephews.

Māori	Meaning
ōku mātua	my parents
Ko Mere rāua ko Hone ōku mātua.	My parents are Mere and Hone.
Kei te pēhea ōu mātua?	How are your parents?

Grandparents, elders and ancestors

One word covers grandparents and ancestors, and it comes in two regional forms. Te Aka gives tupuna, plural tūpuna, as the western dialect form and tipuna, plural tīpuna, as the eastern one. Both are correct; use the one your teacher, iwi or region uses.

Kuia is an elderly woman, a grandmother or a female elder, and koroua an elderly man, an elder, a grandfather or a granduncle. Koro is the warmer grandad or grandpa, and Te Aka notes that it is a term of address to an older man. Karani is a loanword from English granny. Kaumātua means an elder, man or woman, and Te Aka adds that it is a person of status within the whānau, which is more than being old.

Māori	Meaning
Nō Ngāti Porou ōku tīpuna.	My ancestors are from Ngāti Porou.
tōku kuia	my grandmother
tōku koroua	my grandfather

Children and grandchildren

Tamaiti is one child and tamariki more than one. Unlike the other plurals on this page, they are two different words: Te Aka marks tamaiti as used only in the singular and tamariki as normally used only in the plural. A baby is pēpi, borrowed from English. A son is tama, which also means boy or nephew, and a daughter tamāhine, which also means girl.

Mokopuna is a grandchild, and Te Aka’s definition is wider than the English: the child or grandchild of a son, daughter, nephew or niece, and in a further sense any descendant. Moko is the short form, which Te Aka describes as the way an older person addresses a grandchild or a young child.

Māori	Meaning
Ko Pita tāku tama.	Pita is my son.
tāku mokopuna	my grandchild
Tokotoru āku mokopuna.	I have three grandchildren.

Husband, wife and in-laws

Hoa rangatira is a spouse or partner, and works for a husband or a wife. Tāne is a man or husband and wahine a woman or wife, so which one is meant comes from the sentence. Your son-in-law or daughter-in-law is your hunaonga, and your mother-in-law or father-in-law your hungarei.

Māori	Meaning
Ko Hone taku hoa rangatira.	Hone is my husband, partner.

Why mātua has a macron: plurals

Most Māori nouns do not change in the plural; the word in front does, as in te whānau ‘the family’ and ngā whānau ‘the families’. A small group of words for people are different: they lengthen a vowel, and Te Aka lists each long form as the plural.

One	More than one	Meaning
matua	mātua	parent, parents
tupuna	tūpuna	ancestor, grandparent (western)
tipuna	tīpuna	ancestor, grandparent (eastern)
wahine	wāhine	woman, women
tuakana	tuākana	older sibling of the same sex
teina	tēina	younger sibling of the same sex
tuahine	tuāhine	a man’s sister
whaea	whāea	mother, aunt (some iwi)

Since the macron is the only difference, leaving it off changes the meaning: matua is one parent, not two. The pronunciation guide explains how a macron lengthens the vowel it sits on.

My mother, my children: tōku or tāku

Māori has two words for my when it stands before a single thing or person, tōku and tāku, and family is where most learners first have to choose. Te Aka’s rule is that tāku is used when the possessor has control of the relationship, and tōku when the possessor has, or had, no control of it. You did not choose your parents, your siblings or your ancestors, so they take tōku; children and grandchildren take tāku, and Te Aka’s own example sentence for tāku is about a grandchild. Kupu o te Rā’s guide to possession puts husbands and wives in the tāku group too.

tōku (no control)	tāku (control)
tōku tuakana, tōku tuahine	tāku tama
tōku kuia, tōku koroua	tāku mokopuna
ōku mātua, ōku tīpuna	āku tamariki, āku mokopuna

For more than one, the t drops: ōku mātua ‘my parents’, āku tamariki ‘my children’. There is also a neutral taku, which Te Aka describes as the informal form that is not governed by either category, and which always has a noun after it: taku hoa rangatira ‘my spouse’.

Family words in a pepeha

A pepeha introduces you through the places and people you come from, and the family words above are how it names the people. A line such as Ko Mere rāua ko Hone ōku mātua. names your parents, and the parents and ancestors in it take tōku or ōku, because they were there before you. The guide to pepeha goes through the whole introduction, line by line.

Learning the family words

If you are teaching these words to your own tamariki, the guide to te reo Māori for kids adds first words, songs and a plan for learning together as a whānau.

These words are among the first a learner meets: whānau and tamariki are near the top of the Māori frequency list, and how many Māori words you need shows how far the most common few hundred take you. Verbavia’s free te reo Māori course gives the four sibling words a lesson of their own, and the possession rule another, with every example played in Papa Reo’s native te reo voice.