whanau
/ˈfaːnaʉ/noun
whanau is a noun meaning “An extended family” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled W-H-A-N-A-U, and it appears about once in every 30 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of whanau is whanaus or whānaus.
What does whanau mean?
noun
- 1
An extended family.
noun
- 1
Alternative spelling of whanau.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce whanau?
- /ˈfaːnaʉ/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of whanau
- whanaus plural
- whaanau
- whānaus plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is whanau?
Whanau appears about once in every 30 million words in written English, the 165,739th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does whanau come from?
From Māori whānau (“extended family; genus”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).