Word.ws English Dictionary

Hawaiki

Hawaiki proper noun: the original home of the Māori, before they travelled across the sea to New Zealand. It also features as the underworld in many Māori stories.

Proper noun

Hawaiki

  1. The original home of the Māori, before they travelled across the sea to New Zealand. It also features as the underworld in many Māori stories.

Origin of Hawaiki

Borrowed from Māori Hawaiki, from Proto-Nuclear Polynesian *Sawaiki, Doublet of Hawaii and Savai'i.

Questions about Hawaiki

What does Hawaiki mean?
Hawaiki means the original home of the Māori, before they travelled across the sea to New Zealand. It also features as the underworld in many Māori stories.
What part of speech is Hawaiki?
Hawaiki is a proper noun.

Words near Hawaiki in the dictionary

  1. hawaiite
  2. hawaiites
  3. hawaiitic
  4. hawaij
  5. hawaijar
  6. Hawaiki
  7. Hawaikian
  8. Hawaikians
  9. Hawaiʻi
  10. Hawaiʻian
  11. Hawaiʻians

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Hawaiki (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Hawaiki.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hawaiki. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.