Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga

Sources identify Māui as a well-known Polynesian character incorporated into Māori genealogical cosmology. His full name, Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga, is glossed as 'Māui, the topknot of Taranga', linking him explicitly to his mother Taranga and marking him within maternal household identity. An alternative epithet, Māui-pōtiki, identifies him as the youngest child and places him in sibling-order narrative roles. One source records that in infancy his life was precarious but that the gods intervened and Rangi, the Sky Father, nursed him through infancy, situating him within the Sky–Earth genealogical network of Māori cosmogony rather than as an ordinary ancestor.

The provided sources do not give a single, consistent physical portrait of Māui as a human figure; they note the name element tikitiki ('topknot') as an identifying metaphor tied to his name. Several sources state that he was capable of shapeshifting into animals such as birds and worms, indicating narratives present him alternately in human and non-human forms. Beyond the etymological reference to a topknot and statements of shapeshifting, no detailed, standardized description of clothing, size, or fixed physical traits is given in the supplied material.

Sources describe Māui as a culture hero and trickster famed for his exploits and cleverness, and they attribute superhuman strength to him. He is explicitly described as being capable of shapeshifting into animals (examples given are birds and worms). The combined descriptions in the sources present him as an extraordinary ancestral actor who performs transformative acts in mythic time, using cunning and supernatural abilities; however, the supplied excerpts do not enumerate particular feats (such as fishing up islands or slowing the sun), so specific world-shaping deeds common in wider Polynesian tradition are not asserted here from these sources.