Tamanuiterā
Sun god in maori mythology
In Māori mythology, Tama-nui-te-rā (Tamanuiterā) is the personification of the sun.
Etymology
In the Māori language, Tama-nui-te-rā means "Great Son of the Sun". The Māori word for "sun" or "day" is rā, deriving from Proto-Polynesian *laqaa.
Legends
According to the Māori mythology, the sun once moved across the sky so quickly there was not enough time in the day for people to complete tasks. The demigod Māui, along with his brothers, travelled to where Tama-nui-te-rā rose from the underworld and laid ropes to catch him, then beat him to make him travel more slowly across the sky. The rays of the sun are said to be remnants of the ropes which slow the sun's journey across the sky.
Family
In some legends, Tama-nui-te-rā is the husband of Ārohirohi, goddess of mirages. In other legends, Tama-nui-te-rā had two wives, the Summer maid, Hineraumati, and the Winter maid, Hinetakurua. During the year he would divide his time between his two wives; this marked the changing of the seasons and the changing position of the sun in the sky. In winter, the sun rising in the north-eastern sky marked Tama-nui-te-rā residence with Hinetakurua.
“Tamanuiterā” enters the record as sun god in maori mythology. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tamanuiterā, maori and mythology can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3514615. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tamanuiterā” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.