Mātāmua means: Eldest Sibling.
Mātāmua is one of the few terms for siblings which do not reference the gender of both parties. The most common terms for sibling in te reo Māori are:
- tuahine (sister of a boy)
- tungāne (brother of a girl)
- tuakana (elder sibling - same sex)
- teina (younger sibling - same sex)
This can make it difficult for folk to figure out how to refer to siblings if either the speaker or the sibling are nonbinary or similarly gender-diverse. Scholars such as Elizabeth Kerekere are still rediscovering precolonial language for LGBTQIA+ (Takatāpui) terms and attitudes, but it’s not a solved matter in te ao Māori and there’s a lot to unpack there for new speakers who want to talk about their siblings in a gender-neutral way.
A few options for this include:
- mātāmuri (youngest - at the other end to mātāmua, this kupu is in Te Aka but not with this definition, although it is in common use as an opposite to mātāmua - if the sibling you want to talk about happens to be the youngest, you can use this)
- pōtiki (youngest - this is more commonly used to say “my youngest child” so you’d need to make it clear you were talking about “the youngest” in context)
- whakaotinga (youngest child, youngest sibling - I don’t believe this is a super common one)
- tatao (younger sibling of the eldest child - if you happen to be the eldest, all of your siblings can be tatao)
- hāmua (elder sibling, gender neutral)
- hāmuri (younger sibling, gender neutral - recent invention to contrast with hāmua)
There’s a brief video from Tūturu NZ on Insta about the creation of the kupu ‘hāmuri’.