Māori symbols and meanings: koru to hei tiki

Māori symbols and meanings start with the words themselves: the koru, hei tiki, manaia, hei matau and toki are forms from Māori carving, painting and greenstone work, and each name is an ordinary Māori word. Te Aka Māori Dictionary gives koru ‘coil, curled shoot’ as a fold, loop or coil, and as the spiral motif in painted patterns and carving; tiki ‘carved figure’ is a carved human figure, matau ‘fish hook’ a fish hook and toki ‘adze’ an adze. What the forms represent is a harder question, and the honest answer is sometimes that nobody knows: Te Papa, the national museum, says what the hei tiki represents “remains uncertain”. This guide sets out what each word means, what museums and Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, say each form stands for, which popular meanings have no documented source, what pounamu ‘greenstone’ is and why it belongs to Ngāi Tahu, and how to buy and wear these forms with respect.

Updated 20 October 2026 · 15 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 symbols and their meanings at a glance

The middle column is the word’s meaning in Te Aka Māori Dictionary. The last column is what the named source says the form stands for, and nothing more; the sections below give the detail and the disagreements.

Form	What the Māori word means	What the sources say it represents
koru	fold, loop, coil, curled shoot; the spiral motif in kōwhaiwhai and carving	A basic element of painted rafter patterns (1966 Encyclopaedia). Te Aka quotes “numerous accounts” that it symbolises a new shoot, like the fern frond.
hei tiki	hei, something worn round the neck; tiki, a carved human figure	Uncertain (Te Papa). The theories: Tiki the first man, the ancestress Hine-te-iwaiwa, or the unborn child.
manaia	a stylised figure used in carving; also seahorse, lizard, raft	A beaked figure (Te Ara); in some accounts a guardian between the spirit world and the human world (Te Aka’s example). Its nature is disputed.
hei matau	a fish-hook-shaped pendant; matau is a fish hook	The hook of Māui, who hauled up the North Island; the importance of fishing and the relationship with Tangaroa (Te Papa).
toki, toki poutangata	an adze; a greenstone adze carried by a chief	The toki poutangata is “a symbol of chieftainship” (Te Aka) and was carried by chiefs to symbolise their authority (Te Ara).
the twist (sold as “pikorua”)	not a headword in Te Aka	No museum or encyclopedia source was found for a traditional meaning.
roimata	a tear, of crying	Documented as the name of a tukutuku pattern: vertical bands of white crosses (Te Ara).

Which meanings are traditional, and which are modern?

Shops that sell these forms often attach a neat meaning to each one. Some of those meanings come from museum descriptions; many have no documented source at all. The warning is an old one. In the 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, J. M. McEwen wrote that the statement “that every cut in a piece of Maori carving has a meaning” was commonly made, “especially to tourists”, and called the best-known book of such meanings, Ettie Rout’s Maori Symbolism, a “clever and successful hoax” played on her by her informant. “Very little is known of the meaning of carving,” he wrote, and probably much of it was purely decorative.

Te Ara’s modern story on carving, by Brett Graham, describes the same drift from the other side: as Māori were exposed to Christianity and European influence, understanding of the old symbolism started to break down, and carvings “began to be read like a picture book”, a fighting staff meaning a warrior. So the safest reading of any “meaning” card is this: the word’s meaning is certain, the form’s history is often well documented, and a one-line symbolic meaning is only as good as the source it names.

Koru: the coil and the fern frond

A koru as the 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand describes it in kōwhaiwhai: a curved stalk with an almost circular bulb at one end. Drawn for this page.

Te Aka gives koru four senses that belong together: as a verb, to be folded, looped or coiled; as a modifier, coiled; as a noun, a fold, loop, coil or curled shoot; and, fourth, a “spiral motif (in kōwhaiwhai patterns and carving)”. Its example of the ordinary verb is about rope, not art: E koru ana te taura ‘The rope is coiled up’. The word is used of real fern shoots too: Te Aka quotes Te Ara on Māori eating “the curled shoots” of the kiokio fern.

For the motif, Te Aka’s own example sentence says that numerous accounts take the koru to symbolise a new shoot, like the fern frond, the pītau ‘young fern shoot’. That is the meaning most often given, and it has a dictionary’s example behind it; note that the sentence itself presents it as what accounts say, not as a fixed rule.

In the 1966 Encyclopaedia, McEwen describes the koru as one of the two basic elements of kōwhaiwhai ‘painted scroll patterns’, with the double spiral: “a curved stalk with an almost circular bulb on one end”. The same shape appears in early tattooing: he notes that a portrait by Sydney Parkinson, from Cook’s voyage, shows “a simple design of connected koru, much like the designs used in rafter painting”. In carving, Te Ara’s carving story says the curved patterns and spirals “that have become synonymous with Māori art” emerged between 1500 and 1800 as a response to the plants of New Zealand, and names the takarangi and rauru spirals of classical carving.

Hei tiki: a figure worn at the neck

The name is two words. Te Aka gives hei as a verb, to tie round the neck, and as a noun, a necklace or “something worn around the neck”; tiki is a “carved figure, image”, and in particular a neck ornament usually made of greenstone and carved in an abstract human form. Te Papa puts it the same way: on a basic level, hei means neck pendant and tiki refers to the human form. Te Aka’s example sentence shows how the word is used: He taonga tuku iho te hei tiki i tō mātou whānau. ‘The hei tiki is a treasured heirloom in our family.’

This tiki is not the tiki in the Ka Mate haka. Te Aka lists them as separate words: the haka’s tiki mai ‘fetch here’ is the verb to fetch, explained line by line in Ka Mate haka: the words and what they mean.

Te Ara describes the hei tiki as looking like a distorted human figure sitting cross-legged, its large head tilted to one side, and calls it the most well-known piece of Māori jewellery. What it represents is where the sources stop short:

Tiki, the first man. Te Papa and Te Ara both report the suggestion; Te Ara adds that some doubt it, because hei tiki are either female or sexless, and Te Papa that many tiki are female.
Hine-te-iwaiwa. Te Papa gives the theory that the hei tiki represents Hine-te-iwaiwa, “a celebrated ancestress associated with fertility and the virtuous qualities of Māori womanhood”. Te Ara’s weaving story names her as the goddess of childbirth and of the arts pursued by women.
The unborn child. Te Papa gives a further suggestion, that hei tiki represent the unborn embryo, particularly children who are stillborn.

Where the accounts differ

Question	Te Ara (Pounamu)	Te Papa
Who wore hei tiki?	Usually women, “except in very rare cases”	James Cook, in the late 1700s, saw mostly men wearing tiki; accounts from the late 1800s report them worn mainly by women, particularly in pregnancy and childbirth
Fertility	Previously infertile women have given birth after being gifted a hei tiki	Links the form to Hine-te-iwaiwa, associated with fertility, as one theory
What it represents	Gives the Tiki theory and the doubt about it	“Remains uncertain”; gives three theories

Te Papa adds that hei tiki are often heirlooms that embody the wearer’s lineage, and that they have become emblems of both Māori and New Zealand: in the 1960s and 1970s green plastic hei tiki were handed out to passengers on the national airline.

Manaia: the beaked figure

Te Aka’s first sense of manaia is a “stylised figure used in carving”; the same word also means a seahorse, a lizard and a raft. Te Ara’s carving story calls it the manaia “(beaked)” figure, and traces beaked head forms back to early carvings, such as a canoe prow from Doubtless Bay that it calls a forerunner of the manaia profiles of later Māori art. Te Aka’s example sentence, from a 2014 Māori-language source, gives one account of its role: “According to some accounts, the manaia stylised figure is a guardian because it is able to cross from the spiritual world to the human world.” The word kaitiaki ‘guardian’ is the one used there.

On a meeting house, McEwen wrote in 1966, a manaia head usually sits at the lower end of each bargeboard beside a set of carved ribs: the ribs are fingers, and they and the manaia represent the hands of the ancestor the house stands for. The parts of the house are explained in the parts of a marae.

Bird, guardian or human face? Where the accounts differ

Manaia is sometimes described as bird-headed, but that is one side of a long argument. McEwen’s 1966 account sets it out:

Reading	Who gives it	The case
A beaked figure	Te Ara (Brett Graham); Williams’s dictionary, as McEwen quotes it: “a grotesque beaked figure”	The beak is the form’s most visible feature.
A bird-headed man, or a bird	“Many experts”, McEwen reports	McEwen says there is very little traditional evidence for it, and Archey pointed out that manaia normally have teeth, a “distinctly non-avian” feature.
A human figure in profile	Gilbert Archey (1933), followed by McEwen	Every full-faced figure type has a matching manaia whose head is half the full face, and the two are used interchangeably, for example on door lintels.
A guardian between worlds	Te Aka’s example sentence (2014)	Given as what “some accounts” say.

McEwen adds that only the name came down from the old carvers, and suggests it may simply mean “embellishment”, since the related word in Samoan, fa'amanaia, means to decorate. Real birds are a separate subject, with their own Māori names, in Māori birds and animals. Manaia is also a popular baby name today: see Māori baby names.

Hei matau: the fish hook

Te Aka glosses hei matau as a “fishhook-shaped pendant”, and matau alone as a fish hook. (A second, unrelated matau means on the right hand, right.) Te Papa’s description of the hei matau in its collection is the clearest published account of the meaning:

Hei matau are “symbolic representations of the fish hook used by the ancestral Polynesian cultural hero Māui”, who, according to legend, hauled up the North Island, Te Ika-a-Māui, the great fish of Māui, during a fishing expedition with his brothers.
They also denote the importance of fishing to Māori and their relationship to Tangaroa, “the guardian of the sea and its environs”.

Te Papa describes hei matau as stylised fish hook pendants, usually of pounamu; on one, made between 1700 and 1850, the carved crown sits where a line would be bound on a working hook, “but in this case it is entirely decorative”. Te Ara lists the hook-shaped hei matau among the old pounamu necklaces, with the pekapeka, in the form of a native bat.

Toki and toki poutangata: the adze

A toki is an adze, the woodworking blade Te Ara says was used to make canoes, cut down trees and build. The ceremonial form is the toki poutangata, which Te Aka defines as a greenstone adze “used as a weapon by a chief and is a symbol of chieftainship”. Te Ara says it was rarely used in battle and never for shaping wood; like the mere pounamu ‘greenstone club’, it was carried by chiefs to symbolise their authority, owned by chiefly families, and used on ceremonial occasions, such as being placed on the chest of a chief lying in state.

Te Ara adds that toki, mere pounamu and toki poutangata are central in every tribe’s stories of pounamu treasures: they are often named, seen as tapu ‘sacred’ and having great mana ‘status’, and they reminded people of the battles and events their ancestors took part in. The adze in the Ngā Rauru tradition, Te Āwhiorangi, is said to have been used by Tāne to separate the sky and the earth.

The twist and the roimata

Two forms on most jewellery stands have no documented traditional meaning that this guide could find, and it says so rather than repeat a shop’s card.

The twist. Usually sold as pikorua, this is a figure-of-eight loop. The word is not a headword in Te Aka, and no museum, encyclopedia or university source was found that names it or gives it a traditional meaning. Te Ara’s list of old pounamu ornaments does not include it.
The roimata. Roimata is the ordinary word for a tear, of crying. Where reputable sources do use it as a design name, it is in weaving: Te Ara says that in tukutuku panels, vertical bands of white crosses are known as roimata, tears.

Pounamu: the stone, and who owns it

Pounamu is New Zealand’s greenstone. Te Aka gives it three senses: to be dark green; greenstone, nephrite or jade; and, because early bottles were green like greenstone, a glass bottle. Te Ara explains that pounamu, greenstone and New Zealand jade are names for the same stone, and that it comes in two mineral forms: nephrite, the common one, and bowenite, found only at Milford Sound (Piopiotahi). It is found only in the South Island, which Te Ara says was first called Te Wāhi Pounamu, the place of pounamu, a name that became Te Waipounamu ‘the South Island’.

Te Ara names four main kinds Māori recognised by colour and translucence: kawakawa, kahurangi, īnanga and tangiwai, the first three nephrite and tangiwai bowenite. Te Aka describes kawakawa as a dark to rich green, like the leaves of the kawakawa shrub, īnanga as whitish, pale grey-green or creamy, and tangiwai as translucent olive-green with white streaks. One of Te Ara’s tribal origin stories, in a version by Tipene O’Regan of Ngāi Tahu, tells how Poutini turned the woman Waitaiki into pounamu and laid her in the bed of the Arahura River.

The Ngai Tahu (Pounamu Vesting) Act 1997

Te Ara notes that pounamu is found only within the tribal area of Ngāi Tahu, and by law the natural stone there is theirs. After the Waitangi Tribunal’s 1991 report on the Ngāi Tahu claim, Parliament passed the Ngai Tahu (Pounamu Vesting) Act 1997 (the statute prints the name without macrons; it received the Royal assent on 1 October 1997). Section 3 says that all pounamu “occurring in its natural condition” in the tribal area of Ngāi Tahu Whānui, and in the adjacent territorial sea and seabed, ceased to be the property of the Crown and “vests in and becomes the property of Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu”. The Act defines pounamu as bowenite, nephrite (including semi-nephrite) and serpentine in a scheduled area of Westland.

Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu’s own page adds the one exception: pounamu in the Arahura catchment is owned and managed by the Māwhera Corporation, which Te Ara says recognises the special relationship of Poutini Ngāi Tahu, the West Coast people, with that stone. A 2002 resource management plan recognises local rūnanga as kaitiaki of the pounamu in their areas. In practice, Ngāi Tahu says:

Members of the public may fossick for pounamu only on designated beaches of the West Coast, and only as much as a person can carry on their person or in a backpack. Any other collection is illegal without the kaitiaki rūnanga’s authority.
Pounamu found during other work, such as gold mining or earthworks, must be reported and left in place until removal is approved.
Exporting raw or partly worked pounamu over five kilograms needs the approval of the Minister of Customs; finished jewellery and carvings are exempt from that limit.

Should pounamu be a gift?

Gifting pounamu is well documented. Te Ara describes pounamu heirlooms and weapons exchanged to seal peace, the tatau pounamu ‘greenstone door’ as the image of a lasting peace, and women who had been unable to conceive giving birth after being gifted a hei tiki. A blessing for travellers that Te Aka quotes asks that the sea lie smooth as greenstone, kia whakapapa pounamu te moana; see karakia for meetings.

The popular rule that you must never buy pounamu for yourself is another matter. It does not appear in the Te Ara or Te Papa accounts used here, and even a pounamu jewellery business, Mountain Jade, writes that “there is no traditional tikanga (teaching)” saying that buying a stone for yourself brings bad luck, and suggests the idea grew from modern readings of tapu and mana. Treat it as a modern custom that some people keep, not as a documented tradition. Giving pounamu as a gift, on the other hand, has a long history behind it.

Māori patterns: kōwhaiwhai, tukutuku, tāniko and moko

People searching for Māori patterns usually mean one of four art forms, each with its own Māori name. Te Aka’s example sentence lists three together: Kei te kōwhaiwhai, kei te tukutuku, kei te tāniko ngā tauira hangarite maha ‘Rafter paintings, lattice-work and tāniko have many symmetrical patterns’.

Kōwhaiwhai: painted scroll patterns, “commonly used on meeting house rafters” (Te Aka). McEwen describes them in red, black and white, built from the koru and the double spiral, with names such as mangōpare, the hammerhead shark.
Tukutuku: ornamental lattice-work panels set between the carvings around the walls of a meeting house (Te Aka). Te Ara’s weaving story says every design is named, and that like the carvings they “convey a complex language of visual symbols”. Te Aka glosses the stepped poutama as symbolising genealogies and the levels of learning, and purapura whetū, white crosses, as representing the stars and the great numbers of a people.
Tāniko: finger-woven borders for cloaks (Te Aka). Te Ara says the technique is not used by other Polynesian groups, that its designs are triangles, diamonds, diagonal bars and steps, and that the meanings of some tāniko patterns “have since been lost”. Tāniko bodices, armbands and headbands are what members of Māori cultural groups wear: see kapa haka explained.
Moko: Māori tattooing, “done under traditional protocols” (Te Aka); to apply it is tā moko. Te Ara’s story by Rawinia Higgins says moko represented a person’s mana, and that its renaissance since the late 20th century is an expression of identity as Māori, reclaiming the mana of tā moko “by Māori as a people”.

Using Māori symbols with respect

Nothing in the sources forbids anyone from wearing a koru or a hei matau, and Te Ara notes that a pounamu pendant has become a mark of young New Zealanders overseas. What the sources do raise is authenticity and origin:

Buy real pounamu. Te Ara warns that many greenstone items in tourist shops are cheap copies of Māori designs, made overseas from inferior jade. Ngāi Tahu’s authentication system marks genuine Ngāi Tahu pounamu with a mark of authenticity and a unique traceability code which, entered online, identifies the stone’s origin.
Look for Māori makers. Te Ara notes that toi iho, a registered trademark used to promote authentic, quality Māori arts and crafts, requires its artists to use only New Zealand pounamu.
Do not pick it up where it is not allowed. Outside the designated West Coast beaches, taking natural pounamu without the kaitiaki rūnanga’s authority is illegal, and Ngāi Tahu says it pursues legal remedies.
Repeat meanings with their source. Where a museum or dictionary gives a meaning, say whose it is; where none does, as with the twist, say that too.

Going further

The words behind these forms are everyday Māori: taonga ‘treasure’, whakairo ‘carving’, tapu, mana and kaitiaki all come up in the first year of learning the language. Our free te reo Māori course teaches them one lesson a day, with every example played in a native speaker’s voice.