Four seasons in Māori: raumati to kōanga
The four seasons in Māori are raumati ‘summer’, ngahuru ‘autumn’, hōtoke ‘winter’ and kōanga ‘spring’. A season is kaupeka, and Te Aka Māori Dictionary quotes a 1928 newspaper speaking of ngā kaupeka e whā o te tau, the four seasons of the year. In Aotearoa New Zealand summer is December to February and winter is June to August, the other way round from Europe and North America. Below are the words with their alternatives, the months, what each season meant in the Māori year, and sentences ready for the classroom.
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.
The four seasons in Māori
| Māori | English | Say it |
|---|---|---|
| raumati | summer | rah-oo-mah-tee: the a and u glide together |
| ngahuru | autumn; harvest time | ngah-hoo-roo: ng as in singer |
| hōtoke | winter | HAW-taw-keh: a long ō first |
| kōanga | spring; planting time | KAW-ah-ngah: a long ō, then ng as in singer |
The macrons are part of the spelling: hōtoke and kōanga each have one long vowel, held about twice as long as the others. Te Aka also lists koanga without the macron, and it is a different word, meaning joy or delight. How the sounds work is set out in the Māori pronunciation guide, and how to type Māori macrons covers the keyboard.
Which months are summer, autumn, winter and spring in New Zealand?
New Zealand counts its seasons in whole months. Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, gives spring as September to November, summer as December to February and winter as June to August, which leaves March to May for autumn; NIWA’s seasonal climate summaries use the same seasons. The months themselves have Māori names too:
| Season | English | Months | Months in Māori |
|---|---|---|---|
| raumati | summer | December, January, February | Tīhema, Hānuere, Pēpuere |
| ngahuru | autumn | March, April, May | Māehe, Āperira, Mei |
| hōtoke | winter | June, July, August | Hune, Hūrae, Ākuhata |
| kōanga | spring | September, October, November | Hepetema, Oketopa, Noema |
The right-hand column gives the borrowed month names. The traditional names from the lunar calendar, Pipiri, Hōngongoi and the rest, are in the guide to Māori numbers, days and months. In the northern hemisphere the words keep their meanings: raumati is still summer, it just falls in June, July and August there.
Other words for the seasons
Two of the seasons have more than one name, and you will meet all of them.
- Winter is hōtoke, takurua or makariri. Te Ara says hōtoke and makariri both mean winter and cold; Te Aka gives hōtoke as “to be cold” and “winter”, and makariri is the ordinary word for cold. Takurua is also the star Sirius, which Te Ara links with winter.
- Spring is kōanga or aroaromahana. Te Aka glosses aroaromahana as “spring season, warmth”, and it contains mahana ‘warm’.
- Autumn is ngahuru, which also means harvest time and is an old word for ten. More on that below.
- Summer is raumati.
All of them can act as verbs as well as nouns. Te Aka glosses raumati as “to be summer” and takurua as “to be winter”, and quotes an 1899 newspaper on rugby, played in the winter months and stopped kua raumati, once it was summer.
What the season names mean
Two of the four names say what the season was for.
- Kōanga, spring, “includes the word ‘kō’, a digging implement”, says Te Ara: spring is the time to dig the soil. Te Aka has kō as a digging stick and as the verb to dig with one, and glosses kōanga as “planting time, spring”.
- Ngahuru, autumn, is also a word for ten. Te Ara explains that autumn starts during the tenth month of the traditional calendar, and that ngahuru is also the name for the harvest, which falls at that time. Te Aka gives it as the tenth month of the Māori year, “autumn, harvest time — approximately equivalent to March”. Ngahuru as a number is in the numbers guide.
- Takurua, winter, is the name of Sirius, the bright star Te Ara associates with the season.
Summer has a story rather than an explanation. Te Ara and Te Aka both tell that Te Rā, the sun, and Hine Raumati, the summer maid, had a son, Tānerore, and that te haka a Tānerore, Tānerore’s dance, is the shimmer of hot air on a summer day. Te Aka adds that the quivering hands in haka represent it. Summer’s star is Rehua, Antares; Te Ara quotes the saying that the locust and the cricket (Te Aka translates the first as the cicada) are Rehua’s songbirds, because they sing once the summer heat has come.
Seasons in the Māori year: planting, harvest, rest
Before the European calendar, the year was counted in lunar months, and the seasons were read from the stars and from the work in the gardens. Te Ara says the year began, for many Māori, in May or June with the appearance of Matariki. Te Ara prints the notes on each month that Tūtakangahau of Ngāi Tūhoe gave the ethnographer Elsdon Best; grouped by season, and shortened, they run like this:
| Season | Months (Te Ara’s dates) | What the notes say |
|---|---|---|
| hōtoke, winter | Pipiri (May–June) to Here-turi-kōkā (July–August) | Everything is shrunk with cold; people sit close to their fires, until the fire’s scorch shows on their knees. |
| kōanga, spring | Mahuru (August–September) to Whiringa-ā-rangi (October–November) | The earth, the plants and the trees warm up; by the end, summer has come and the sun is strong. |
| raumati, summer | Hakihea (November–December) to Hui-tanguru (January–February) | Birds sit on their nests; fruit ripens and the new season’s food is eaten. |
| ngahuru, autumn | Poutū-te-rangi (February–March) to Haratua (April–May) | The crops are harvested, then stored in pits, and the year’s work is finished. |
The main crop was kūmara ‘sweet potato’. Te Ara’s history of the kūmara says it would not grow through a New Zealand winter, so the tubers were grown over summer, harvested around March and kept in underground pits, some to eat over the winter and some to plant again. Te Aka’s words for the two ends of that cycle are whakatō ‘to plant’ and hauhake ‘to harvest, dig up a root crop’. The maramataka guide has the nights of the moon that were chosen for planting, and Matariki the stars that open the year.
Sayings about the seasons
These are quoted as Te Ara and Te Aka print them, with their translations.
- Takē Kōanga, whakapiri Ngahuru: absent at planting time, close by at harvest. Te Ara: said of people who vanish during the hard work of spring and turn up when food is plentiful in autumn.
- Hoa piri ngahuru taha kē raumati: a friend in autumn but not in the summer. Te Aka: autumn was the harvest, and summer was when the gardens had to be tended.
- Ngahuru, kura kai, kura tangata: harvest-time, wealth of food, the wealth of people (Te Ara).
- Takurua hūpē nui: winter, when your nose runs (Te Ara).
Te Ara also notes that summer was not always welcome: food could run short at its height, and one saying calls Rehua, the summer star, “the weakener”.
Where the accounts differ
| Question | Te Ara | Te Aka Māori Dictionary |
|---|---|---|
| Is ngahuru still a number? | “an archaic word for ten” | Ten, “used in a similar way to tekau but less frequently”, and still forms 11 to 19 |
| When is the month of ngahuru? | The tenth month, February–March | The tenth month, “approximately equivalent to March” |
| When does Pipiri fall? | May–June, in the list given to Best | “approximately equivalent to June”, as the months are fitted to the calendar today |
| When were kūmara planted out? | The Kūmara story says the tubers were “planted out in summer”; the weather story calls spring “the time to dig the soil” | Its example for aroaromahana, quoting Te Ara, says the tubers were planted out “the following spring” |
None of this changes the words. The lunar months never matched the European ones exactly, so any date range for them is approximate; the maramataka guide explains why.
Christmas falls in raumati: the words for it are in Merry Christmas in Māori.
Sentences for the classroom
These come from our own course’s lessons and reading passages, apart from the last, which is a Te Aka example. To talk about the past, put i ‘in, at’ before the season; for the future, ā.
| Māori | English |
|---|---|
| He makariri, nō te mea he takurua tēnei. | It’s cold, because it’s winter. |
| He raumati tēnei. | It’s summer. (The same pattern, with the season swapped.) |
| I tērā raumati, i haere mātou ki te moana. | Last summer, we went to the sea. |
| Ka hoki au ki te kāinga ia raumati. | I go back home every summer. |
| Ā te raumati, ka haere mātou ki te Tai Tokerau ki te kite i te whānau. | In summer we’ll go to Northland to see the family. |
| Kei te kimi au i tētahi koti mō te takurua. | I’m looking for a coat for winter. |
| I mate ngā rākau o te māra, ā, kāore he hua i te ngahuru. | The plants in the garden died, and there was no crop in autumn. |
| Ka puāwai ngā kōwhai he tohu tēnā kua aroaromahana. | When the kōwhai is in flower, it’s a sign that it’s spring. |
The kōwhai is a good one for a class: Te Ara says light spring showers are called kōwhai showers, after the yellow flowers that come out on the tree in September. Words for the weather itself, rain, wind, snow and sun, are in Māori nature words, and phrases for the past and the future, such as last year and next week, are in ka mua, ka muri. Verbavia’s te reo Māori course teaches raumati, ngahuru, hōtoke, kōanga and takurua, free on the web.
Sources
- Te Aka Māori Dictionary: raumati — to be summer; summer; and the saying “Hoa piri ngahuru taha kē raumati”.
- Te Aka Māori Dictionary: ngahuru — ten; tenth month of the Māori year, autumn, harvest time, approximately March.
- Te Aka Māori Dictionary: hōtoke — to be cold; winter.
- Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kōanga — be spring; planting time, spring; and koanga, joy.
- Te Aka Māori Dictionary: takurua — to be winter; winter; Sirius.
- Te Aka Māori Dictionary: makariri — be cold; winter (sense 4).
- Te Aka Māori Dictionary: aroaromahana — spring season, warmth; the kōwhai example.
- Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kaupeka — season (sense 5), with “ngā kaupeka e whā o te tau”.
- Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kō — to dig; digging stick.
- Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Tānerore — son of Tama-nui-te-rā and Hine-raumati; te haka a Tānerore, heat haze.
- Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Rehua — Antares, the star associated with summer.
- Te Aka Māori Dictionary: whakatō — to plant; hauhake — to harvest.
- Te Ara: Tāwhirimātea – the weather, The seasons (Basil Keane): the months of spring, summer and winter; kō in kōanga; ngahuru and ten; Tānerore; Rehua; kōwhai showers; the sayings.
- Te Ara: Maramataka – the lunar calendar, Lunar months: Tūtakangahau’s month notes, after Best; the year beginning with Matariki.
- Te Ara: Kūmara – Introducing kūmara to New Zealand (stored over winter, planted out in summer).
- Te Ara: Kūmara – Tools and storage pits (grown over summer, harvested around March).
- NIWA / Earth Sciences New Zealand: seasonal climate summaries (Summer 2025–26, Autumn 2026, Winter 2026, Spring 2025).