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Aotearoa () is the Māori name for New Zealand. The name was originally used by Māori in reference only to the North Island, with the whole country being referred to as Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu – where Te Ika-a-Māui means North Island, and Te Waipounamu means South Island. In the pre-European era, Māori did not have a collective name for the two islands.
Several meanings for Aotearoa have been proposed; the most popular translation usually given is "land of the long white cloud", or variations thereof. This refers to the cloud formations which are believed to have helped early Polynesians navigators find the country in Māori oral tradition.
Beginning in the late 20th century, Aotearoa has become widespread in the bilingual naming of national organisations and institutions. Since the 1990s, it has been customary for particular parties to sing the New Zealand national anthem, "God Defend New Zealand" (or "Aotearoa"), in both Māori and English, which further exposed the name to a wider audience.
New Zealand English speakers pronounce the word with various degrees of approximation to the original Māori pronunciation, from at one end of the spectrum (nativist) to at the other. (2025). 9783110175325, Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110175325 Pronunciations documented in dictionaries of English include , , and .
The use of Aotearoa to refer to the whole country is a post-colonial custom. Before the period of contact with Europeans, Māori did not have a commonly used name for the entire New Zealand archipelago. As late as the 1890s the name was used in reference to the North Island ( Te Ika-a-Māui) only; an example of this usage appeared in the first issue of Huia Tangata Kotahi, a Māori-language newspaper published on 8 February 1893. It contained the dedication on the front page, " He perehi tenei mo nga iwi Maori, katoa, o Aotearoa, mete Waipounamu", meaning "This is a publication for the Māori tribes of the North Island and the South Island".
After the adoption of the name New Zealand (anglicisation from Nova Zeelandia) by Europeans, one name used by Māori to denote the country as a whole was Niu Tireni, (1998). 9780195583489, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195583489 a respelling of New Zealand derived from an approximate pronunciation.
The expanded meaning of Aotearoa among Pākehā became commonplace in the late 19th century. Aotearoa was used for the name of New Zealand in the 1878 translation of "God Defend New Zealand", by Judge Thomas Henry Smith of the Native Land Court—this translation is widely used today when the anthem is sung in Māori. Additionally, William Pember Reeves used Aotearoa to mean New Zealand in his history of the country published in 1898, The Long White Cloud Ao-tea-roa.
Since the late 20th century Aotearoa is becoming widespread also in the bilingual names of national organisations, such as the National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.
The New Zealand province of the Anglican Church is divided into three cultural streams or tikanga (Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia), with the Aotearoa tikanga covering Māori-speaking congregations within New Zealand.
In 2015, to celebrate Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week), the Black Caps (the New Zealand national cricket team) played under the name Aotearoa for their first match against Zimbabwe.
In September 2021, Te Pāti Māori started a petition to change the name of New Zealand to Aotearoa. The petition reached 50,000 signatures in two days.
By early June 2022, Te Pāti Māori's petition to rename New Zealand "Aotearoa" had received over 70,000 signatures. On 2 June, the petition was submitted before Parliament's committee. Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi argued that the proposed name change would recognise New Zealand's indigenous heritage and strengthen its identity as a Pacific country. Waititi objected to the idea of a referendum, claiming it would entrench the "tyranny of the majority". National Party leader Christopher Luxon stated that renaming New Zealand was a constitutional issue that would require a referendum. Māori Development Minister Willie Jackson expressed concerns that a potential name change would create branding issues for the country's tourism industry.
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