Māori team names, business names and boat names

Good Māori team names and meanings come from everyday words: Kotahitanga ‘unity’, Manawanui ‘staunch, steadfast’, Karawhiua ‘give it everything!’ or a national side’s own Māori name, such as the Silver Ferns’ Rau Hiriwā. Below are words for sports teams, netball teams, groups and committees, businesses and boats, each with its meaning in Te Aka Māori Dictionary and how to say it; then the ways real Māori names are built, the second meanings to check before you print anything, and what New Zealand’s trade mark office does with a name in te reo.

Updated 24 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.

How to say the names

In the Say it columns every vowel is its own syllable, except ai and au, which glide together. Say wh as f, ng as in singer, tap the r lightly, and hold a vowel with a macron for twice as long. The Māori pronunciation guide explains each sound. A macron is part of the spelling, not decoration: on a shirt, a sign or a hull, kākano ‘seed’ without its macrons is kakano ‘colour, texture’, a different word. How to type Māori macrons covers every keyboard.

Māori team names for strength, speed and unity

No source lists traditional Māori team names, and the names below are not presented as such. They are ordinary words, chosen for what a team wants to be.

Name	Meaning (Te Aka)	Say it
Kotahitanga	unity, togetherness, solidarity, collective action	Ko-ta-hi-ta-nga
Kotahi	one, single	Ko-ta-hi
Manawanui	steadfast, stout-hearted, resolute, persistent, committed, staunch	Ma-na-wa-nu-i
Karawhiua	give it everything! go for it! give it heaps!	Ka-ra-whi-u-a
Kōkiri	to thrust forward, charge, rush forward; in rugby, to drive	Kō-ki-ri
Toa	to win; brave, skilful; champion, winner; warrior	To-a
Māia	brave, bold, confident; bravery; also a competitor	Mā-i-a
Kaha	strong, able, capable, courageous, energetic	Ka-ha
Tere	quick, swift, fast	Te-re

Kotahi is the word in Kīngi Tāwhiao’s saying about the single reed that breaks and the bundle that does not, and a team’s strength being that of many, not of one, is a proverb of its own, Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi engari taku toa he toa takitini. Both are explained in Māori proverbs. More words for character, already set out as pet names, are in Māori pet names.

Māori netball team names, and the national teams’ own names

Netball in Māori is poitarawhiti (poi-ta-ra-whi-ti) or the loan netipōro. Te Aka lists Māori names for several national sides, and they show how a team name is put together: a noun, then the words that describe it.

Team	Māori name (Te Aka)	Word by word
Silver Ferns (netball)	Rau Hiriwā	rau ‘leaf, frond’ + silver
Black Caps (cricket)	Pōtae Pango	pōtae ‘cap, hat’ + pango ‘black’
Tall Blacks (basketball)	Kapa Pango Tāroaroa	kapa ‘team’ + black + tāroaroa ‘tall’

Te Aka spells the netball team’s name with a long ā, Hiriwā, though its entry for the colour silver is hiriwa. The All Blacks’ own name, Kapa o Pango, is the name of the haka they first performed in 2005, and it has its own page: Kapa o Pango.

Māori names for groups, committees and choirs

Te reo has several words for a group, and they are not interchangeable. Pick the one that matches what the group does.

Word	Meaning (Te Aka)	Say it
kapa	team, group, company of people; also a rank or row	ka-pa
tīma	team (a loan from English)	tī-ma
rōpū	group, party, association, committee, organisation	rō-pū
tōpūtanga	association, collective, grouping, organisation	tō-pū-ta-nga
kāhui	flock, herd, cluster, company; also a constellation	kā-hu-i
ohu	to work as a volunteer group, do something cooperatively; a cooperative	o-hu
tira	travelling party, company of travellers, troupe, choir	ti-ra
hono	company, assembly, following; as a verb, to join, connect	ho-no

A few fixed combinations: a kapa haka is a haka or Māori performing group, and a choir is a tira waiata or a rōpū waiata. Ohu suits a working bee or a volunteer crew, which is what it means: Te Aka’s example has a whole community doing a job together because one person alone could not finish it. A kāhui is a gathering of like things, from a flock to the stars of Matariki. How a kapa haka group is run, and what it performs, is in kapa haka.

Māori business names: growth, light, craft and quality

For a business the useful words are the ones that say what it stands for. Read the second meanings further down before choosing rama, kounga or toa.

Name	Meaning (Te Aka)	Say it
Tipu, Tupu	to grow, develop, prosper, sprout (tipu in the east, tupu in the west)	Ti-pu, Tu-pu
Puāwai	to bloom, come to fruition, open out (of a flower)	Pu-ā-wai
Kākano	seed, kernel, pip, grain	Kā-ka-no
Māramatanga	enlightenment, insight, understanding, light	Mā-ra-ma-ta-nga
Rama	torch, lamp, light	Ra-ma
Auaha	to shape, create, fashion	Au-a-ha
Ringatoi	artist	Ri-nga-toi
Pūmanawa	talented, gifted; natural talent	Pū-ma-na-wa
Mātanga	skilled, experienced	Mā-ta-nga
Kounga	quality, excellence, standard	Kou-nga
Pono	true, honest, genuine, sincere	Po-no
Manaaki	to support, take care of, give hospitality to	Ma-na-a-ki
Hono	to join, connect	Ho-no

Craft has its own phrase, mahi toi ‘art, craft’. And pono and manaaki are values as well as words: IPONZ’s own guideline names tika, pono and aroha among the values that protect mauri ‘life force’, which is a reason to use them for something that lives up to them. Workplace words such as manaakitanga are in Māori words at work.

Māori boat names

Waka is a canoe, and more widely any vehicle; a boat or dinghy is the loan poti, and a ship is a kaipuke. A boat name can be the sea, what the boat does on it, or a part of the boat.

Name	Meaning (Te Aka)	Say it
Moana	sea, ocean, large lake	Mo-a-na
Ngaru	wave (of the sea)	Nga-ru
Marino	to be calm, still (usually of the sea)	Ma-ri-no
Hau	wind, breeze	Hau
Tere	fast; and, in a separate entry, to float, drift, glide, sail	Te-re
Rere	to fly, flow, leap, rush, race (any gliding movement)	Re-re
Whakatere	to steer, navigate (a canoe), buoy up, speed up	Wha-ka-te-re
Urungi	to steer	U-ru-ngi
Kaiurungi	captain	Kai-u-ru-ngi
Whakarewa	to launch, set in motion, put afloat	Wha-ka-re-wa
Tauihu	bow, prow, figurehead (of a canoe)	Tau-i-hu
Hoe	to paddle, row	Ho-e

Tere is the rare word that works twice for a boat: Te Aka has it as fast and, under a separate entry, as to float, sail. For a waka ama crew, an outrigger canoe is a waka ama, a paddler a kaihoe, and a double-hulled voyaging canoe a waka hourua, such as Te Aurere in Te Aka’s example sentence.

Ancestral canoe names are not spare names

Names such as Tainui, Te Arawa or Mātaatua belong to the founding canoes. Te Ara explains that tribal groups trace their origins to the captains and crews of more than 40 named vessels, so those names are part of iwi identity and whakapapa, and IPONZ counts whakapapa and iwi names among the Māori elements it refers to its advisory committee. A boat named after one is best discussed with that iwi first.

How Māori names are built

Real Māori names for organisations and teams follow a handful of patterns, all of them in Te Aka. Two rules hold throughout: the describing word comes after the noun, and te means the for one, ngā the for more than one, with the noun itself unchanged.

Pattern	Real name (Te Aka)	What it is
noun + describing word	Waka Kotahi	the New Zealand Transport Agency (vehicle + one)
noun + describing word	Rōpū Kākāriki	the Green Party (group + green)
te + noun + noun	Te Ohu Kaimoana	the Māori Fisheries Trust
te + noun + description	Te Kāhui Tika Tangata	the Human Rights Commission
te + noun + o + place	Te Tira Puoro o Aotearoa	the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
te + noun + o + place	Te Ohu Rata o Aotearoa	the Māori Medical Practitioners’ Association
te + noun + o + place	Te Kāhui Matepukupuku o Aotearoa	the Cancer Society of New Zealand
verb + noun	Manaaki Whenua	Landcare Research (care for + land)
verb + noun	Manaaki Tangata	Victim Support (care for + people)

Every one of these names uses o for of, never a; the difference between the two is explained in Māori possessives. Te Puea’s kapa haka, in Te Aka’s example, was named Te Pou o Mangatāwhiri ‘the post of Mangatāwhiri’ on the same pattern.

So, using only the words on this page: Te Waka Tere ‘the swift canoe’ for a boat, Ngā Toa ‘the champions’ for a team, Te Kapa Kaha ‘the strong team’, or Ngā Kaihoe o and your place name for a waka ama crew. Two cautions. A few people-words change in the plural, as wahine becomes wāhine and tamaiti becomes tamariki. And a name that seems simple can still read oddly to a speaker, which is why the last section of this page matters.

Check the second meaning

A Māori word often has more than one entry in the dictionary, and a name ends up on shirts, signs and invoices. These came up in this page’s own searches:

Karawhiua is go for it!, but karawhiua atu is an idiom of warning: go ahead then, said to someone who will not take advice and is about to find out why.
Toa is a champion and a warrior, and also, as a loan, a shop, and the male of an animal. For a shop that may be the point.
Rama is a torch or lamp, and also, as a loan, rum.
Kounga is quality, and in a separate entry a half-burnt stick, firebrand.
Mātanga is skilled; another entry gives surgeon.
Pono is true and honest, and also to come upon by chance.
Kapa is a team, and also a loan meaning penny; tira is a travelling party, and also a mast.
Kotahitanga is unity, and with a capital it is the name of the 19th-century Māori Parliament, a movement for self-government and national unity.
Rere, in a separate Waikato entry, is the exclamation heck.

Using a Māori name for a business or trade mark

New Zealand’s Trade Marks Act 2002 stops the Commissioner of Trade Marks registering a mark whose use or registration would be likely to offend a significant section of the community, including Māori. To advise on that, the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) has had a Māori Trade Marks Advisory Committee since 2003. Here is what IPONZ says happens:

Every application is assessed. Any mark that contains, or appears to derive from, an element of Māori culture is referred to the committee, whoever the applicant is. IPONZ’s list of such elements starts with Māori words, proverbs and expressions, and includes whānau, hapū, iwi and marae names, place names, native birds and plants, art and imagery.
It costs nothing extra and, IPONZ says, does not delay examination in most cases.
The committee advises; the Commissioner decides. The Commissioner considers the committee’s advice but is not required to follow it, and the examiner tells the applicant if an objection is being raised.
Context counts. IPONZ’s example is tapu and noa: associating something tapu, such as an atua like Papatūānuku or a word like kuia, with something noa, such as food, alcohol or cigarettes, could be offensive. It names alcohol, tobacco, gambling and genetic technologies as goods where Māori elements could cause offence.
Asking first is advised, not required. IPONZ encourages applicants to seek advice from a Māori language or cultural expert, a Māori artist or designer, or the relevant iwi, hapū or whānau, and says plainly that this is not a legal requirement. Its optional Aratohu Mātauranga checklist walks through where a name came from and who was consulted.

For the language itself, Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, the Māori Language Commission, does not translate for the public. It certifies translators under the Māori Language Act 2016 and keeps a register of them, searchable by region and specialism, and it notes that not everyone who speaks Māori is a translator. A business name is a short text, but it is the text you will print most often. If your logo will carry a pattern or a figure as well as the name, read Māori symbols and their meanings first.

For the words used on the field, the ball, a try, a scrum and every position, see rugby in Māori.

Names for people and pets

This page is about names for groups, things and businesses. Names for children, with the Department of Internal Affairs’ most popular Māori names each year, are in Māori baby names and their meanings, and names for animals, by colour, bird and character, are in Māori pet names and dog names. The words themselves, from kotahi to waka, are taught in Verbavia’s free te reo Māori course, with every example played in Papa Reo’s native te reo voice.