Niu

Although originally the name for the coconut palm, Cocos nucifera (Arecaceae), in Aotearoa this word came to be applied to slender wands or sticks used in ceremonies to foretell the outcome of projected events or enterprises.

ETYMOLOGY:
From PROTO MALAYO-POLYNESIAN *niuR, Cocos nucifera , "Coconut palm & fruit " (Arecaceae).
through PROTO OCEANIC *niuR, Cocos nucifera
and PROTO POLYNESIAN: *Niu, Cocos nucifera.

COGNATE WORDS IN SOME OTHER POLYNESIAN LANGUAGES
Tongan, Samoan, Niue, Marquesan, Hawaiian, Tahitian, Tuamotu: Niu (Cocos nucifera, "Coconut palm & fruit", Arecaceae)
Manahiki (Cook Islands): Nī (Cocos nucifera, including fruit)
Rarotongan: Nū (Cocos nucifera, including fruit)

RELATED WORDS
Proto Central Eastern Polynesian : *Nīkau, frond and nut of Cocos nucifera, and in some languages also the coconut palm itself.
Several other Māori words also reflect older terms which at some point in their history were associated with the coconut. The etymologies of these are outlined in the page for Proto Polynesian *niu: kakano, "seed"; fenu, "strand of a garment"; rama, "torch"; kaka, "garment"; whā, "leaf with long stalk and sheathing base".

This is a word that arrived in Aotearoa but whose meaning was apparently retained only in the abstract, applied to the slim sticks or wands used by priests in divining the outcome of pending battles and similar phenomena, and a child's toy. Elsdon Best quotes an account of the way the divining niu were used from unpublished notes by John White:

The expert stuck two sticks in the ground in an upright position, and tied another stick to them in a horizontal position. He then took a wand of koromiko (Veronica) to which a lock of hair from the head of a tapu priest or chief was attached, and waved it repeatedly across the sticks, at the same time reciting a charm. Auguries were drawn from the movements of the hair, and as to whether or not it struck the horizontal stick. This was employed in ascertaining the fate of a proposed attacking party in war. One would suppose that the result lay entirely in the operator's hands, but we are informed that his slightest movements were controlled by the gods; and who shall say it was not so? (Maori Religion and Mythology, pp. 285-6.)

In the mid 19th Century a pole called a niu was at the centre of ceremonies conducted by the prophet Te Ua Haumēne and his followers. Te Ara The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand derives niu in this context from the English word "news", but it is likely that the divinatory function of the ropes and flags attached to the pole also resonated with the similar function of the small sticks and wands, and also by then many Māori would have been aware of the earlier meaning of the term still current in other parts of Polynesia.

Ironically, the term kokonati, adopted from English, or its variant kokonata, have until recently been the usual Māori words for coconut. They are still listed in most dictionaries, but He Pātaka Kupu, the monolingual dictionary published for school use by the Māori Language Commission in 2008 also lists niu as "hou, reo kē" (new, [from a] foreign language) for the nut and flesh of the coconut, adding a note to the effect that this is the principal word used by the many peoples of the Pacific for this concept. The excellent on-line Māori Dictionary, Te Aka, lists all three words, commenting that niu is a "term recently adopted from other Polynesian languages". Interestingly, He Pātaka Kupu lists kuru as a regular Māori word for "breadfruit", but Te Aka lists only pōporo and pōporohua (the latter literally "poroporofruit"). See the pages for *kulu, kuru and poroporo for a discussion of this topic.