Shapes in Māori: porowhita, tapawhā, tapatoru

Shapes in Māori are mostly named by counting their sides: a triangle is tapatoru ‘three sides’, a four-sided shape is tapawhā, a hexagon tapaono. A circle is porowhita, a square is tapawhā rite ‘equal four-sided’ and a rectangle is tapawhā hāngai. The word for shape is āhua. Below are the flat shapes with a picture, how the names are built, the words for sides and corners, the 3D shapes, and the sentences a teacher or parent needs. Every word is as Te Aka Māori Dictionary gives it, and most of the maths terms come from the Ministry of Education’s Māori-medium maths dictionary, Te Reo Pāngarau.

Updated 23 October 2026 · 6 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.

2D shapes in Māori

A vowel with a macron is held about twice as long, and ng is the sound in the middle of English singer. The sounds are set out in the Māori pronunciation guide.

Te Aka gives porohita as another spelling of the word for circle, so both porowhita and porohita are right; its own example of the second is Tuhia he porohita. ‘Draw a circle, please.’ For an oval it also gives porotītaha, and in science and maths an ellipse is pororapa.

A star is whetū, the same word as a star in the sky. Its points are mata: an example in Te Aka, describing the four red stars on the New Zealand flag, says e rima ngā mata o ia whetū ‘each star has five points’.

How the names are built: tapa and a number

Tapa means a side of a polygon, and the number words are the ordinary ones. Put them together and the name says how many sides the shape has:

There is no two-sided shape, and Te Aka has no word for one. The numbers themselves, and how to count past ten, are in Māori numbers, days and months.

Adding a word after the name narrows it down. Rite means alike or equal, so tapatoru rite is an equilateral triangle, with all three sides equal, and tapawhā rite is the square. Hāngai means perpendicular or right-angled, so tapatoru hāngai is a right-angled triangle and tapawhā hāngai, the four-sided shape with right angles, is the rectangle.

Sides, corners and angles

Te Aka’s example for the rectangle uses three of these at once: E whā ngā tapa, e whā hoki ngā kokonga hāngai o te tapawhā roa ‘A rectangle has four edges and four right angles’. Tapawhā roa, a long four-sided shape, is one more name for the rectangle.

Square or tapawhā? Where the accounts differ

The one word that causes confusion is tapawhā. Verbavia’s own word list glosses it square; four-sided figure. Te Aka and the maths dictionary are more exact:

Both are right, because a square is one kind of tapawhā. When it matters which four-sided shape you mean, as it does in a maths lesson, say tapawhā rite for the square and tapawhā hāngai for the rectangle. The same word is in the name of the health model Te Whare Tapa Whā, the four-sided house.

3D shapes in Māori

A flat shape is āhua ahurua ‘two-dimensional shape’, and a solid one is ahutoru ‘three-dimensional’. The faces of a solid are mata, and the maths dictionary names many solids by counting them, as the flat shapes count their sides: mataono, six faces, is the cube.

Koeko covers both the cone and the pyramid: the maths dictionary defines it as a solid whose base is a polygon or a circle and whose other faces meet at one point. To tell them apart, name the base, as the table does. Te Aka’s everyday example is Ka rite te āhua o tērā maunga ki te koeko. ‘The shape of that mountain is like a cone.’

Poro is named the same way: a prism is called after the shape of its two ends, so a triangular prism is poro-tapatoru. And the word for sphere is a good one to teach alongside poi: the Poi E page has the song.

Talking about shapes in the classroom

The patterns are the same ones used for colours. To ask what shape something is, and to answer:

To count sides, use the question word hia ‘how many’ with e, exactly as for counting anything else:

A colour goes after the shape, the way every describing word does in Māori. The colours themselves are in Māori colours.

And for drawing, cutting and building:

The last sentence, a triangle roof on a square house, uses a position word; the rest of them are in directions in Māori. Te Aka’s example for āhuahanga, another word for shape, is a classroom scene: Nā ngā tamariki i tapahi he āhuahanga mai i ngā pepa kano ‘The children cut out shapes from the coloured paper’.

Ideas for teachers and parents

• Teach the number words first. A child who can count to eight can work out tapatoru, tapaono and tapawaru without being told.
• Count the sides out loud. Trace each side with a finger, say tahi, rua, toru, then name the shape.
• Go looking for shapes. A wheel is a porowhita, a window is often a tapawhā, a ball is a pōro.
• Combine colour and shape in one instruction: Tuhia he porowhita kahurangi. ‘Draw a blue circle.’

More of this kind is in te reo for teachers and Māori for kids. Verbavia’s te reo Māori course teaches the numbers and everyday sentence patterns these words fit into, free on the web.

Sources

1. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: porowhita — to be circular, round; circle, wheel, ring.
2. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: porohita — circle, with “see also porowhita” and the example “Tuhia he porohita”.
3. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: porowhita haurua — semicircle.
4. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tapatoru — triangle; tapatoru rite, equilateral triangle; tapatoru hāngai, right-angled triangle.
5. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tapawhā — four-sided; rectangle; quadrilateral (citing Te Reo Pāngarau 2010:257).
6. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tapawhā rite — square (citing Te Reo Pāngarau 2010:259).
7. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tapawhā hāngai — rectangle, oblong.
8. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Tapawhā roa — rectangle, with the example on edges and right angles.
9. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: taparima — pentagon.
10. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tapaono — hexagon.
11. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tapawhitu — heptagon.
12. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tapawaru — octagon.
13. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tapaiwa — nonagon.
14. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tapa-tekau — decagon.
15. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: taparau — polygon.
16. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tapa — (polygon) side.
17. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: rite — alike, equal.
18. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: hāngai — perpendicular (maths); right-angled.
19. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: rau — hundred.
20. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: koki — corner; angle (citing Te Reo Pāngarau 2010:153); koki hāngai, right angle.
21. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kokonga — corner.
22. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: akitu — vertex (citing Te Reo Pāngarau 2010:100).
23. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: mata — face, surface, point, tip; with the example on the five points of each star on the flag.
24. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kōpiko — winding.
25. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: porohema — oval, egg-shaped; porotītaha — be oval.
26. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: pororapa — ellipse.
27. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: whetū — star; asterisk.
28. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: āhua — shape, appearance, form.
29. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: āhuahanga — shape; geometry.
30. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: āhua ahurua — two-dimensional shape (citing Te Reo Pāngarau 2010:254).
31. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: ahutoru — three-dimensional, solid (shape).
32. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: matarau — polyhedron, named by the number of faces (citing Te Reo Pāngarau 2010:165).
33. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: poi — the poi ball and dance; sphere (citing Te Reo Pāngarau 2010:204).
34. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tīrake — sphere.
35. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: pōro — ball (loanword).
36. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: mataono — cube; mataono rite — cube (citing Te Reo Pāngarau 2010:161).
37. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: mataono — cuboid (adjective).
38. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: poro-tapawhā hāngai — rectangular prism, cuboid.
39. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: rango — roller; cylinder.
40. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: koeko — tapering; cone, pyramid (citing Te Reo Pāngarau 2010:152).
41. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: koeko porohita — (geometry) cone.
42. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: koeko-tapawhā rite — square pyramid.
43. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: poro — block, log; prism (citing Te Reo Pāngarau 2010:205).
44. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: poro-tapatoru — triangular prism.
45. He Kupenga Hao i te Reo (2010). Te Reo Pāngarau, second edition. Wellington: Ministry of Education and He Kupenga Hao i te Reo — the Māori-medium maths dictionary, as listed in Te Aka’s bibliography under TRP.