Māori numbers, days of the week and months

Māori counts with ten words — tahi ‘one’, rua ‘two’, toru ‘three’ and on to tekau ‘ten’ — and builds everything else out of them. Eleven is tekau mā tahi ‘ten and one’, twenty is rua tekau ‘two tens’, a hundred is kotahi rau ‘one hundred’. Below are the numbers, the two small rules for counting things and people, the ordinals, the time, and both sets of names for the days and months.

Updated 5 October 2026 · 10 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.

Māori numbers 1 to 10

There are two columns because Māori has two ways of using the same number. The first is the number on its own, as you would count aloud. The second is how you say how many of something there are, which puts a small e in front of two to nine and turns one into kotahi ‘one’. Both are explained in the next sections; learn the first column first.

Only one of the ten carries a macron: whā ‘four’. The others are short vowels throughout, and every syllable ends in a vowel. The pronunciation guide covers the wh and the long vowel.

11 to 19: tekau mā …

The teens are ten, the word mā, and the digit. Te Aka Māori Dictionary defines this mā as “and — when connecting numbers”, so tekau mā tahi ‘eleven’ is literally “ten and one”. There is nothing irregular to learn: no eleven or twelve with a name of its own, and no teen that changes shape.

Twenty to a thousand: tens, hundreds and thousands

The tens are a digit in front of tekau: rua tekau ‘twenty’ is “two tens”, toru tekau ‘thirty’ “three tens”. The units join on with mā exactly as in the teens, so twenty-five is rua tekau mā rima and ninety-nine is iwa tekau mā iwa. A hundred is rau and a thousand mano, each with its multiplier in front.

The 130 and the 500,000 are not constructed here: both come from example sentences in Te Aka, “Kotahi rau e toru tekau mātau i te kura ‘there were one hundred and thirty of us in the school’” and a sentence about “rima rau mano” people making linen in France. Te Aka also gives mano miriona ‘billion’, with miriona borrowed from English. In everyday writing a year or a large figure is usually left in digits: Nō te tau 1990 tēnei whare. ‘this house is from 1990’

Counting things: e rua, e toru, and why tahi becomes kotahi

To say how many of something there are, Māori puts the number first, then ngā (the plural “the”) and the noun: e rua ngā whare ‘two houses’. The little e in front of the number is where learners slip, and Te Aka states the rule exactly: e is “used before hia? and when stating numbers of things where the number begins with a word of one vowel or two short vowels”.

That is a rule about the shape of the word, not about the size of the number, and it explains every case at once:

• rua, toru, whā, rima, ono, whitu, waru and iwa all qualify, so two to nine take it: e toru, e waru.
• tekau is longer, so ten takes nothing, and nor does any teen, because tekau mā rua begins with tekau.
• rua tekau begins with rua, so twenty takes it again: E rua tekau tāra. ‘twenty dollars’ The same goes for e rua rau tāra ‘two hundred dollars’.
• One is not e tahi. Saying how many, one is kotahi — kotahi te kurī ‘one dog’ — and kotahi is long enough to stand on its own. tahi is the counting form, and it lives on inside tekau mā tahi.

Note that one dog is kotahi te kurī, with the singular te, while two or more take ngā.

Counting people: toko-

People are counted differently. For two to nine, the number takes the prefix toko- instead of e: tokorua ngā tāngata ‘two people’, tokotoru ‘three (people)’. Te Aka’s entry for the prefix says it combines with numbers 2–9 and with hia “when referring to people”, which gives the question too: Tokohia āu tamariki? ‘how many children have you got?’ — Tokorua āku tamariki. ‘two’

Past nine the prefix stops, and people are counted like anything else. Te Aka’s own example under Rātū is E rua tekau ngā tamariki ka tae mai ā te Rātū. ‘twenty children will arrive on Tuesday’ It is the same care with people that you meet in the greetings, where tēnā koe, tēnā kōrua and tēnā koutou count the people you are greeting; the greetings guide sets that out.

How many? E hia?

hia is the question word “how many?”, and it takes the same e as the numbers that answer it:

The age question is a good place for a macron to matter: tau ‘year, number’ is short, and tāu ‘your’ is a different word.

First, second, third: Māori ordinals

Ordinals add tua to the front of the number. Te Aka’s entry for the prefix says it combines with the numbers 1 to 9, and for ten to nineteen with ngahuru — “but not tekau” — so the tenth is tuangahuru, not a form built on tekau.

You will see them every day in kura tuatahi ‘primary school’ and kura tuarua ‘secondary school’, and in sentences like Ko Hānuere te marama tuatahi. ‘January is the first month’ There is a second way: te plus the plain number, followed by o. Te Aka notes that tekau mā tahi means “eleventh” after te, and this is the form dates use.

Days of the week in Māori

There are two sets of names, and you will meet both. One is built on rā ‘day’; the other is borrowed from the English names and spelt the Māori way. Sunday, Rātapu, belongs to both. Te Aka marks Mane, Tūrei, Wenerei, Tāite, Paraire and Hātarei as loanwords, and quotes Rātapu from a source dated 1917.

Which to use? Either is correct. Māori Language.net puts it plainly: “Traditional text and native speakers tended to use the kupu arotau or loan words. Modern Māori learning environments tend to favour Ngā Rā o te Wiki.” Wikipedia’s calendar article dates the shift: since about 1990, Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, the Māori Language Commission, has promoted the Māori-derived sets. Te Aka gives the reasoning for one of them: Rāhina is rā plus the old word for the moon, māhina, shortened. The course’s lessons use the rā names, and its word list has the loanwords as well.

Two particles carry the day. ā looks forward and i looks back:

• Ka haere au ā te Rāmere. ‘I’m going on Friday’
• I te Rāhina i haere au. ‘I went on Monday’
• Ko te Rāhina tēnei rā. ‘today is Monday’

Months in Māori: transliterations and the maramataka

The months also come in two sets, and here the difference is more than style. The transliterations — Hānuere, Pēpuere and the rest — are the English months. The other set comes from the maramataka, the Māori lunar calendar, whose year Te Papa describes as beginning “with the first new moon following the appearance of Matariki (Pleiades) on the eastern horizon”. That is why Te Aka lists Pipiri as the “first lunar month of the Māori year — approximately equivalent to June”, and Kohitātea as the eighth. The Matariki guide names the nine stars whose rising opens the year, and lists every Matariki public holiday date.

Read the right-hand names with two cautions. First, they are approximate: Te Papa notes that “the traditional lunar months … do not occur at precisely the same time as the Gregorian months”, and Te Aka’s own example for Haratua has it beginning on the 28th night of April. Second, the maramataka was never one calendar: Te Papa says “each tribe had its own traditions and knowledge around Matariki and Maramataka”, and Te Aka lists other names for several of these months.

On spelling: Te Aka, Te Papa and the course all write the maramataka names as above, as single words except for Whiringa-ā-nuku and Whiringa-ā-rangi. Wikipedia hyphenates the others too — Kohi-tātea, Hui-tanguru, Poutū-te-rangi, Paenga-whāwhā, Here-turi-kōkā — which is the same names with a different convention, not different words. The macrons are the part that must not move: of the transliterations, seven carry one, and Mei, Hune, Hepetema, Oketopa and Noema have none.

Month itself is marama ‘month, moon’ — the same word as the moon. Keep its vowels short: mārama ‘clear, to understand’ is a different word.

Telling the time in Māori

The hour is the number followed by karaka ‘o’clock’, borrowed from “clock”, with the same counting rule as everywhere else: Kotahi karaka. ‘one o’clock’ but E rua karaka. ‘two o’clock’

Half past has a borrowed word too, hāwhe pāhi ‘half past’; Te Aka’s example, from a source dated 1878, is i te hāwhe pāhi o te 8 i te pō ‘at half past eight in the evening’. An hour is hāora, a minute meneti and a week wiki.

Saying the date

A date uses the te ordinal from above: the day number after te, then o, then the month. Te Aka’s example under tekau is Nō te tekau o Ākuhata ka haere mātou. ‘on the tenth of August we departed’ The year is te tau and the number, which in practice is often written in digits: I haere mai au i te tau 2019. ‘I came in 2019’

Why this is the easy part of te reo

Ten words, one joining word, two prefixes and one rule about short words, and you can count to a thousand and say how many of anything there are. Regularity like this is part of what puts a language among the easiest languages to learn. The numbers are also high-frequency words: all ten sit in the first hundred words of the Māori frequency list, and the guide to how many Māori words you need explains why words like these come first. In Verbavia’s te reo Māori course the numbers and the counting of people arrive together, early, and the days, times and dates follow once there is enough grammar to put them in a sentence.

Sources

1. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tekau (“originally it meant 20…”; tenth after te; Nō te tekau o Ākuhata; Kotahi rau e toru tekau)
2. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: e (before hia? and numbers beginning with a word of one vowel or two short vowels)
3. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: mā (“and — when connecting numbers”)
4. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kotahi
5. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: rau (hundred)
6. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: mano (thousand; rima rau mano)
7. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: mano miriona (billion)
8. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: hia
9. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: toko- (numbers 2–9 and hia, of people)
10. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tua- (1 to 9; ngahuru but not tekau for 10 to 19)
11. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Rāhina (from māhina, moon)
12. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Rātū (E rua tekau ngā tamariki ka tae mai ā te Rātū)
13. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Rātapu (1917 citation)
14. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Mane (loan)
15. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Pipiri (first lunar month, approximately June)
16. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Kohitātea (eighth lunar month, approximately January)
17. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Haratua (twelfth lunar month; begins on the 28th night of April)
18. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: karaka (o’clock)
19. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: hāwhe pāhi (half past)
20. Te Papa: Months of the Maramataka — the Māori lunar calendar
21. Māori Language.net: Days of the week — Ngā Rā o te Wiki
22. Wikipedia: Māori calendar (Te Taura Whiri promoting Māori sets since about 1990; hyphenated month spellings)
23. Wiktionary: ʻumi (Hawaiian, ten)