Hawaiki
/haˈwa.i.ki/noun
A traditional Polynesian homeland or ancestral underworld in several East Polynesian cultures, especially Māori.
Did you know?In Māori tradition, Hawaiki is both the remembered homeland of migration and a spiritual destination of the dead, making it a word where ancestry and the afterlife meet.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Polynesian
PPN
“Reconstructed ancestral place-name related to the homeland/otherworld concept in Polynesian tradition”
East Polynesian
EP
Hawaiki
“Ancestral homeland, origin place, and in some traditions the realm of the dead”
Māori Oral Tradition
Māori
Hawaiki
“The legendary homeland from which the ancestors came and to which spirits return”
19th Century
English
Hawaiki
“Recorded by ethnographers and linguists as the Polynesian ancestral homeland name”
Modern English
English
Hawaiki
“The traditional Polynesian homeland or otherworld, especially in Māori and related contexts”