Polynesian Mythology and Religion
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50 free Polynesian Mythology and Religion trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Polynesian religion grew up across a triangle of ocean that stretches from Hawaii to Aotearoa New Zealand to Rapa Nui. The islands lie thousands of kilometres apart, yet their peoples share a family of gods, a trickster hero who turns up in almost every archipelago, and a set of ideas about sacred power and prohibition that shaped daily life from fishing to warfare. This quiz covers that shared world and its local versions: the creation stories of the Māori, the great gods and temple rites of old Hawaii, the legends of Samoa and Tahiti, and the beliefs of the island Europeans named for Easter. There are questions on priests, sacred places, guardian spirits and festivals, and on what happened when missionaries and island rulers overturned the old order in the nineteenth century. It suits mythology fans, students of world religions, travellers heading for the Pacific, and anyone who first met these stories through film. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will learn something even from the ones you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes and fire is said to live in Halemaʻumaʻu crater at Kīlauea?
Pele
Pele reached Hawaii by canoe from Tahiti, legend says, and in one telling an older sister had banished her for the fires she started.
Q 02Which British explorer brought the word taboo into English after hearing it on a Pacific voyage in 1777?
James Cook
James Cook heard the word in Tonga, where he noted it covered anything forbidden to be eaten or used. Māori say tapu and Hawaiians say kapu for the same idea.
Q 03Which Polynesian word for a sacred supernatural force now names the magic points spent in many video games?
Mana
Mana got its first detailed description in English from the missionary Robert Henry Codrington in 1891. The writer Larry Niven made it a fuel for casting spells in a 1969 short story.
Q 04In Māori mythology, which first man also gives his name to carved humanoid figures found across Polynesia?
Tiki
Tiki found the first woman, Marikoriko, in a pond in one Māori tradition. A carved pendant worn around the neck is called a hei-tiki.
Q 05Which giant stone figures of Easter Island were carved as the living faces of deified ancestors?
Moai
Moai still gazed inland across their clan lands when Europeans first arrived in 1722. Nearly half never left the quarry at Rano Raraku.
Q 06In Māori tradition, which part of New Zealand is the giant fish hauled up by the demigod Māui?
North Island
North Island is Te Ika-a-Māui, the Fish of Māui, in Māori. His hook was made from his grandmother's jawbone, and in some traditions his canoe became the South Island.
Q 07In Polynesian legend, what did the trickster Māui snare with ropes and beat until it agreed to move slowly?
The Sun
The Sun once crossed the sky so fast that people had too little daylight for working and eating. Māui and his brothers noosed it at the pit where it slept at night.
Q 08Which Disney film sends a village chief's daughter across the ocean to find the shape-shifting demigod Maui?
Moana
Moana cast Dwayne Johnson as the voice of Maui. The idea took shape in 2011, when co-director John Musker began reading up on Polynesian mythology.
Q 09In Māori tradition, the ancestor Paikea reached New Zealand from Hawaiki on the back of which animal?
A whale
A whale carried Paikea to shore after, in the best-known telling, his half-brother Ruatapu tried to kill him and his brothers at sea. The film Whale Rider follows a girl who is named after him.
Q 10Which Polynesian dance was, in one legend, born on the island of Molokaʻi to the goddess Laka?
Hula
Hula was denounced as a heathen dance by the American missionaries who arrived in 1820, and newly Christian chiefs were urged to ban it.
Q 11In Māori myth, which god of forests and birds pushed apart his parents, the sky father and earth mother?
Tāne
Tāne succeeded after several of his brothers had tried and failed, sending Ranginui into the sky and leaving Papatūānuku below. Until then their children had lived in darkness between them.
Q 12Which Māori god rules the sea and its fish, having fled there when his storm-god brother attacked?
Tangaroa
Tangaroa is the enemy of the forest god in Māori thought, so anyone who puts to sea to fish or travel is entering an enemy's realm.
Q 13In Hawaiian legend, which dwarf-like people built the Alekoko fishpond on Kauaʻi in a single night?
Menehune
Menehune are said to appear only at night, and to abandon any project they cannot finish before morning. Temples, roads and canoes were credited to them too.
Q 21In Māori myth, which small bird's laughter woke the death goddess Hine-nui-te-pō and doomed the hero Māui?
Fantail
Fantail laughter rang out as Māui tried to win immortality for humankind by passing through the sleeping goddess's body. She woke and crushed him.
Q 22From which headland in New Zealand's far north do the spirits of Māori dead leap on their way to Hawaiki?
Cape Reinga
Cape Reinga is Te Rerenga Wairua in Māori, the leaping-off place of spirits. The dead are said to climb down the roots of an 800-year-old pōhutukawa tree to reach the underworld.
Q 23Which Hawaiian word names the temples that were built for purposes from healing the sick to success in war?
Heiau
Q 14Which group of stars marks Matariki, the Māori New Year, with its first rising in late June or early July?
Pleiades
Pleiades and Matariki are the same stars, in the constellation Taurus. New Zealand has marked their return with an official public holiday since 2022.
Q 15Which Hawaiian word for a priest or expert did the 1959 surf film Gidget carry into slang?
Kahuna
Kahuna covered doctors, dentists and expert seamen as well as priests. The surfing champion Duke Kahanamoku is said to have rejected the nickname Big Kahuna because he knew the original meaning.
Q 16Which Hawaiian god of peace and rain was honoured by the Makahiki festival, when war was forbidden?
Lono
Lono was represented by a long pole hung with a strip of tapa cloth, and fighting was outlawed so that his image could pass unhindered.
Q 17Which Hawaiian god of war was the only one whose worship included human sacrifice?
Kū
Kū, in his form Kūkaʻilimoku, was the guardian of the king who unified the islands. Three colossal statues of him were reunited at Honolulu's Bishop Museum in 2010 after almost 200 years apart.
Q 18Which Hawaiian king broke the kapu system in 1819 by sitting down to eat a meal with women?
Kamehameha II
Kamehameha II shared the meal with his mother Keōpūolani and his father's widow Kaʻahumanu six months into his reign. His forces then beat the old religion's last defenders at Kuamoʻo.
Q 19Which deposed Hawaiian monarch translated the Kumulipo creation chant into English while under house arrest?
Liliʻuokalani
Liliʻuokalani called the 2,102-line chant a prayer of the development of the universe and the ancestry of the Hawaiians. Her translation was published in 1897.
Q 20Which guardian water beings of Māori tradition had a New Zealand highway rerouted around a lair in 2002?
Taniwha
Taniwha can be protective guardians or dangerous predators. The Ngāti Naho tribe had part of State Highway 1 moved to protect one said to look like a large white eel.
Heiau could be built to bring rain, to stop rain or to help a distant voyage. Many were deliberately destroyed after Hawaiian religion officially ended in 1819.
Q 24Which kind of Polynesian sacred ground has a UNESCO-listed example at Taputapuātea on the island of Raʻiātea?
Marae
Marae also means cleared and free of weeds or trees in the languages that use the word. Samoans say malae and Marquesans say meʻae for the same kind of place.
Q 25In Hawaiian belief, what is a deified ancestor who guards a family and may appear as a shark or an owl?
ʻAumakua
ʻAumakua might also show itself as an octopus, a lizard, a plant or even a rock. Eating the animal form of the family's own guardian was an offence it could punish with illness.
Q 26In Hawaiian tradition, which crop grew from the grave of Hāloa, the stillborn son of the god Wākea?
Taro
Taro became the staple food of the Hawaiian people. A second child, also named Hāloa, grew up to be their ancestor, which makes the plant an elder sibling of humankind.
Q 27Which Māori god of wind and storms is said to have torn out his own eyes and flung them into the sky?
Tāwhirimātea
Tāwhirimātea acted in rage after his brothers separated their parents and one of them beat him in battle. The winds are said to be unpredictable because he is blind.
Q 28In Easter Island's Birdman contest, what did swimmers race to bring back from the islet of Motu Nui?
A tern's egg
A tern's egg won the contest for the swimmer's patron, who shaved his head and went into seclusion for a year. Christian missionaries ended the cult in the 1860s.
Q 29In Māori myth, Māui tricked the fire goddess Mahuika into giving up which burning parts of her body?
Her fingernails
Her fingernails went one by one as Māui put out each flame she handed him. She threw the last at him in fury, but it missed and flew into groves of māhoe and kaikōmako trees.
Q 30In Māori myth, into which animal did Māui transform his brother-in-law Irawaru after a fishing trip together?
A dog
A dog was the result when Māui stretched out Irawaru's limbs back on shore, making him the first of the species. Versions differ on what the two had quarrelled about.