The Four Winds of Tawhirimatea, Named

Tawhirimatea's brood of storm children, already recorded as squalls, whirlwinds and thunderclouds sent to guard the four quarters, carries specific names in Te Ara, the New Zealand government's own encyclopedia. The wind sent north is Tuaraki; the wind sent south is Tonga; the wind sent east is Marangai; and the wind sent west is Hauauru. Each regional wind in Aotearoa is understood, in traditional terms, as one of these four made local, so that a wind blowing from a given quarter carries the specific child's name rather than Tawhirimatea's own, a genealogy of weather worked out compass point by compass point. Te Ara notes that this naming was never uniform nationwide: each region built its own store of further words, sayings and traditions around Tawhirimatea's domain on top of the four principal names, so the same wind might carry additional local names and associations depending on the iwi describing it. The pattern is consistent with Tawhirimatea's brood already works: a father who does not merely send storms in general but assigns them, individually and by name, to stand watch over every direction at once, so that no compass bearing in Aotearoa is ever without a wind that answers, by name, to him.