Māori kings and queens in order, and the words

The Māori kings and queens in order are Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, Tāwhiao, Mahuta, Te Rata, Korokī, Te Atairangikaahu, Tūheitia and, since 2024, the Māori queen Ngā Wai Hono i te Pō: eight monarchs of the Kīngitanga ‘the Māori King movement’, founded in 1858 to unite Māori under one sovereign. Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, calls it one of the longest-running political organisations in New Zealand, and says its seat is Waikato; its centre is Tūrangawaewae marae at Ngāruawāhia. A Māori king is a kīngi and a queen a kuīni, both borrowed from English. This guide gives the full list with the dates of every reign, how each new monarch has been chosen, why the movement began, and the Māori words you will hear around it.

Updated 22 October 2026 · 12 min read

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The Māori King list

Every monarch so far has been a descendant of the first, Pōtatau Te Wherowhero of Waikato. The dates are those of Te Ara and NZ History; the days come from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography and, for the last two reigns, Te Aka Māori Dictionary and RNZ.

#	Monarch	Reign	Became monarch	Relationship
1	Pōtatau Te Wherowhero	1858–1860	installed at Ngāruawāhia in 1858	the first king
2	Tāwhiao (Tūkāroto Matutaera Pōtatau Te Wherowhero)	1860–1894	proclaimed king at Ngāruawāhia on 5 July 1860	son of Pōtatau
3	Mahuta Tāwhiao Pōtatau Te Wherowhero	1894–1912	anointed in August 1894 while his father lay in state at Taupiri	son of Tāwhiao
4	Te Rata Mahuta Pōtatau Te Wherowhero	1912–1933	invested beside his father’s body on 24 November 1912	son of Mahuta
5	Korokī Te Rata Mahuta Tāwhiao Pōtatau Te Wherowhero	1933–1966	crowned on 8 October 1933, the day of his father’s funeral	son of Te Rata
6	Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, the first queen	1966–2006	crowned on 23 May 1966, a few hours before Korokī’s burial	daughter of Korokī
7	Tūheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII	2006–2024	crowned on 21 August 2006, at his mother’s tangihanga	son of Te Atairangikaahu
8	Ngā Wai Hono i te Pō, the second queen	2024–	named and anointed on 5 September 2024, the last morning of her father’s tangihanga	daughter of Tūheitia

The longest reign was Te Atairangikaahu’s, 40 years; the shortest was the first, since Pōtatau, already old when he accepted, died at Ngāruawāhia on 25 June 1860. Te Ara calls Ngā Wai Hono i te Pō the current and eighth sovereign, and RNZ reported that at 27 she was the second-youngest Māori monarch to be appointed.

One name is missing from the eight on purpose. While Mahuta sat in Parliament’s Legislative Council, from 1903, the kingship was temporarily entrusted to his younger brother, Te Wherowhero Tāwhiao; the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography says Mahuta officially resumed it on 21 May 1910. Neither Te Ara nor NZ History counts the brother as a separate monarch. Nor was the most famous Kīngitanga leader of the twentieth century ever on the throne: Te Puea Hērangi, Te Rata’s cousin, gave the movement practical leadership in Te Rata’s reign and went on shaping Korokī’s, but Te Ara notes she was never the sovereign.

Where the accounts differ

The sources agree on the order and the years. They differ on a few details of the beginning and, by a day, at the end.

Detail	Te Ara	Other published accounts
Where Pōtatau agreed to be king	at a meeting at Haurua among Ngāti Maniapoto in 1857, called Te Puna o te Roimata	at Rangiriri, in April 1857 (NZ History)
When Pōtatau was anointed	declared king at Ngāruawāhia in 1858; confirmed and anointed by Wiremu Tāmihana there the following year	crowned and anointed at Ngāruawāhia in June 1858 (NZ History); consecrated by Wiremu Tāmihana in 1858 (DNZB, Te Atairangikaahu)
The titles considered before “king”	ariki tauaroa, toihau, kahutatara	“Father of the Tribes”, Ariki Taungaroa, Toihau, Rangatira (NZ History)
The second king’s name	calls him Tāwhiao from his proclamation on 5 July 1860	he succeeded as Matutaera and was given the name Tāwhiao in 1864, by the Pai Mārire prophet Te Ua Haumēne (NZ History, DNZB)
The day Tūheitia died	30 August 2024	RNZ’s obituary, published on 30 August, closes with the dates 21 April 1955 – 29 August 2024
How the queen’s name is written	Ngā Wai Hono i te Pō; also Kuini Wai Hono i te Pō	Ngā Wai Hono i te Pō (NZ History); Kuini Nga wai hono i te po, without macrons (RNZ)

How a new Māori king or queen is chosen

The kingship is not inherited automatically. RNZ’s obituary of Tūheitia puts it plainly: the position “is not hereditary by right and a new leader is appointed by leaders of the tribes associated with the Kiingitanga on the day of the previous monarch’s funeral and before burial.” Te Ara tells each succession the same way. When Mahuta died in 1912 the assembled rangatira considered his successor during the tangihanga ‘funeral’, and chose Te Rata; at Te Rata’s tangihanga in 1933 the visiting rangatira again chose a successor from the kāhui ariki ‘royal family’ of Pōtatau. Te Aka defines the kāhui ariki as the royal family of the Kīngitanga, usually the descendants of Tāwhiao.

Twice the next monarch was foreseen early. When Pōtatau accepted the kingship, Te Ara says, the Ngāti Maniapoto leader Tanirau suggested that his son Tāwhiao could carry it on after him. Tāwhiao in turn, in his last days, announced: “Papa te whaitiri, ka puta Uenuku, ka puta Matariki. Ko Mahuta te kingi!” (“The thunder crashes, Uenuku appears, Matariki appears. Mahuta is the king!”)

In 2006 the choice was put to the crowd. At the funeral of Te Atairangikaahu, Te Ara records, the elder Tui Adams of Tainui asked three times Ko Tūheitia hei kīngi? ‘Should Tūheitia be king?’, and three times the people answered Āe ‘yes’. RNZ’s obituary adds that Tūheitia had expected his older sister Heeni to succeed and learned only shortly before his mother’s death that he would. In 2024 RNZ reported that the Tekau-mā-rua, the Kīngitanga’s council of twelve representatives from iwi across the country, had met in wānanga ‘forum, deliberation’ for several days with other leaders before Ngā Wai Hono i te Pō was announced, and that her selection was “not a foregone conclusion”: her brothers had also been considered.

The new monarch is then anointed, whakawahi ‘to anoint, crown’, in the ceremony Te Ara calls the whakawahinga, with a Bible. Te Ara says Wiremu Tāmihana held a Bible over Pōtatau’s head and used the same one for Tāwhiao, and that his descendant Anaru Tāmihana used it again for Tūheitia; the DNZB says it was placed on the head of Te Atairangikaahu. Te Aka’s own example for whakawahi, from a 1912 newspaper, remarks that the king was anointed not with oil but with a Bible on his head. At the 2024 ceremony, the Guardian reported, the new queen was anointed with sacred oils and blessed with the Bible used to crown the first king.

Why there is a Māori king

There was no single Māori sovereign before Europeans came, Te Ara explains: hapū ‘kinship groups’ were led independently by their own rangatira ‘chiefs’. By the 1850s Māori faced growing numbers of British settlers, political marginalisation and mounting Crown pressure to buy their land. NZ History notes that by 1858 Pākehā outnumbered Māori, and that land sales were dividing tribes. Some Māori, among them men who had met Queen Victoria, put the power of the British down to their one sovereign. A king equal to the Queen of England, Te Ara says, was meant to end intertribal conflict, keep Māori land in Māori hands and give Māori a separate governing body. What the word Māori itself meant at the time, and how it came to name a people, is in what does Māori mean.

From 1853 Mātene Te Whiwhi of Ngāti Raukawa travelled the central North Island looking for a king. One senior chief after another declined: each answered, in Te Ara’s words, that they were primarily iwi leaders. Te Kani a Takirau of the East Coast said his mountain, Hikurangi, was not one that travels. In 1856 Iwikau Te Heuheu of Ngāti Tūwharetoa proposed Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, who had wide genealogical connections and the fertile, wealthy lands of Waikato behind him. That mattered, NZ History says, because a king and his people would have to host gathering after gathering.

At his installation, NZ History records, Pōtatau likened his position to “the eye of the needle through which the white, black and red threads must pass”. Te Ara gives the advice he left his people before he died:

I muri, kia mau ki te whakapono, kia mau ki te aroha, ki te ture. Hei aha te aha, hei aha te aha.
“After I am gone, hold fast to faith; hold fast to love; hold fast to law. Nothing else matters now – nothing.” (Te Ara’s translation)

Every word of it is everyday Māori: kia mau ki te whakapono ‘hold fast to faith’, kia mau ki te aroha ‘hold fast to love’, with ture ‘law’ last. Governor George Grey would not accept two sovereigns; his troops invaded Waikato in July 1863, and some 1.2 million acres of the Kīngitanga’s land were confiscated. Te Aka’s word for that is raupatu ‘to conquer, take without any right; confiscated’, and Te Ara says the return of the land became the central concern of Tāwhiao and the leaders after him. Te Ara says the raupatu was finally settled under Te Atairangikaahu: on the eve of the 29th anniversary of her coronation, the DNZB records, she signed the Waikato Raupatu Deed of Settlement at Tūrangawaewae.

The words: kīngi, kuīni, Kīngitanga and Te Arikinui

Māori	Meaning (Te Aka unless noted)	Note
kīngi	king, ruler, monarch, sovereign; also a verb, to reign as king	A loanword from English. As a title it comes first: Kīngi Tūheitia, Kīngi Tāwhiao.
kuīni	queen; also a verb, to reign as queen	A loanword with a long second i. Written without it, Te Aka’s kuini is a quince. RNZ writes the queen’s title Kuini, with no long-vowel marks at all.
Kīngitanga	the King Movement	Te Aka: established to stop the loss of land, keep law and order and promote traditional values; its strongest support comes from the Tainui tribes. Lower-case kīngitanga is a kingdom, reign or sovereignty.
ariki	paramount chief, high chief, first-born in a high-ranking family	The old word for the highest rank, in use long before the kingship.
Te Arikinui	ariki + nui ‘great’	The title the DNZB says Te Atairangikaahu took as queen, and the one RNZ uses for Tūheitia and for the present queen, Te Arikinui Kuini Nga wai hono i te po. Te Aka has no entry for it; its example under kīngi translates Te Arikinui Te Atairangikaahu as “the paramount chieftainess”.
kāhui ariki	the royal family of the Kīngitanga	Usually defined as the descendants of Tāwhiao.
tongi	a prophetic saying by a charismatic leader (Tainui dialect)	Tāwhiao’s sayings are tongi, and Te Ara says they have guided the Kīngitanga ever since.

Why “king”? When the people met at Rangiaowhia in 1858 to settle Pōtatau’s title, Te Ara says, the crowd first offered Māori ones: ariki tauaroa ‘chief of chiefs’, toihau ‘supreme head’ and what Te Ara writes as kahutatara, Te Aka’s kāhu tātara ‘supreme chief’. Te Aka’s examples for toihau and kāhu tātara come from a telling of the naming in which Te Tāpihana repeats an incantation, asks “He aha?” (“What?”), and chiefs answer with these titles. NZ History adds that Te Moananui of Hawke’s Bay argued for the new word precisely because there were many chiefs: the title had to set the leader apart. So the Kīngitanga’s monarch is a kīngi, not an ariki, though Te Arikinui keeps the older word in the title.

Tūrangawaewae: the marae and the saying

Tūrangawaewae is two things. Written lower-case it is the idea of a place to stand, where a person has rights of residence and belonging through kinship and whakapapa ‘genealogy’, explained in Māori words with no English equivalent. With a capital it is, in Te Aka’s words, the main marae of the Kīngitanga, at Ngāruawāhia, named by Te Puea after a saying of King Tāwhiao. Te Ara quotes the saying:

Ko Arekahānara tōku haona kaha
Ko Kemureti tōku oko horoi
Ko Ngāruawāhia tōku tūrangawaewae.
“Alexandra [present-day Pirongia] will ever be a symbol of my strength of character, Cambridge a symbol of my wash bowl of sorrow, and Ngāruawāhia my footstool.” (Te Ara’s translation)

Te Ara translates tōku tūrangawaewae here as my footstool, and Te Aka explains why: footstool is its second sense, from the Māori Bible, where it is written as two words. Te Puea raised the money for the marae by touring the country with her kapa haka group, Te Pou o Mangatāwhiri, and its meeting house, Māhinaarangi, opened in 1929. Korokī welcomed Queen Elizabeth II there in December 1953, and Te Ara says it remains the centre of the Kīngitanga.

Koroneihana and poukai: the year of the Kīngitanga

Koroneihana is the English coronation borrowed, and Te Aka gives it a second sense: the year’s biggest gathering of the Kīngitanga’s followers, celebrating the anniversary of the anointing of the king or queen. Its date therefore moves with each reign. Under Korokī, Te Aka’s example says, every koroneihana was held at Waahi, near Huntly; Te Atairangikaahu, crowned on 23 May, celebrated the 40th anniversary of her koroneihana in May 2006; Tūheitia’s was in August, and he died, RNZ reported, just days after his last. The present queen’s first Koroneihana was at Tūrangawaewae in early September 2025, and RNZ reported that organisers estimated the crowd on one day of it at about 9,000.

The poukai ‘King Movement gathering’ is the other fixture. Tāwhiao began it in 1885, Te Ara says, to comfort the widowed, bereaved and destitute and to discuss redress for the land, and the monarch still visits almost 30 marae, each holding its own annual poukai, with flag ceremonies, pōwhiri, hākari ‘feasts’ and talk of local issues. The Kīngitanga’s flags are described in the Māori flag and its history.

The eighth monarch: Ngā Wai Hono i te Pō

Ngā Wai Hono i te Pō, daughter of Tūheitia, was 27 when she was named on 5 September 2024. Te Ara says she went to kōhanga reo ‘language nest’, is a proficient kapa haka performer, and holds a Master of Arts in tikanga and te reo Māori from the University of Waikato, after which she looked after the Kīngitanga’s collection of taonga ‘treasures’. RNZ reports that she was named by her grandmother, Te Atairangikaahu, who heard of the birth at a meeting at night near Parikino. Word for word, her name is ngā wai ‘the waters’, hono ‘to join’ and i te pō ‘in the night’.

Going further

Tāwhiao’s best-known saying, about a single reed and a bundle of them, is among the proverbs in whakataukī: Māori proverbs and what they mean, and the way Māori name the land and people they come from is in how to introduce yourself with a pepeha. The cloaks worn by chiefs on great occasions are in korowai and Māori cloaks. Many of the words on this page, from ariki and rangatira to whakapono, aroha and ture, are taught in Verbavia’s free te reo Māori course, one lesson a day.