Pākehā
The most likely sources are the Māori words pākehakeha or pakepakehā, which refer to an oral tale of a "mythical, human like being, with fair skin and hair who possessed canoes made of reeds which changed magically into sailing vessels".
[5] There is no etymological support for this notion—like all Polynesian languages, Māori is generally very conservative in terms of vowels; it would be extremely unusual for pā- to derive from poaka.
The word poaka itself may come from the proto-Polynesian root puaka, known in every Polynesian language (puaka in Tongan, Uvean, Futunian, Rapa, Marquisian, Niuean, Rarotongan, Tokelauan, and Tuvaluan; it evolved to the later form puaʻa in Samoan, Tahitian, some Rapa dialects, and Hawaiian); or it might be borrowed or mixed with the English 'porker'.
In December 1814, the Māori children at Rangihoua in the Bay of Islands were "no less eager to see the packaha than the grown folks".
[8] The Oxford Dictionary of New Zealandisms (2010) defines the noun Pākehā as 'a light-skinned non-Polynesian New Zealander, especially one of British birth or ancestry as distinct from a Māori; a European or white person'; and the adjective as 'of or relating to Pākehā; non-Māori; European, white'.
In 1831, thirteen rangatira from the Far North met at Kerikeri to compose a letter to King William IV, seeking protection from the French, "the tribe of Marion".
Written in Māori, the letter used the word Pākehā to mean 'British European', and the words tau iwi to mean 'strangers (non-British)'—as shown in the translation that year of the letter from Māori to English by the missionary William Yate.
However, speakers of New Zealand English are increasingly removing the terminal 's' and treating the term as a collective noun.
[20][18] Some embrace it while others object to the word,[17] sometimes strongly, saying it is offensive or derogatory, carrying implications of being an outsider, although this is often based on false information about the meaning of the term.
"[26] New Zealand writer and historian Michael King wrote in 1985: "To say something is Pakeha in character is not to diminish its New Zealand-ness, as some people imply.
