Lifestyle
A 27-year-old just became queen of New Zealand's Maori
Maori Queen Nga Wai Hono i te Po was anointed on Thursday, a week after the death of her father, who had been king for 18 years.
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Phil Walter/Getty Images
The Maori of New Zealand anointed a new monarch on Thursday, officially installing 27-year-old Nga Wai Hono i te Po as their second-ever queen.
The ceremony capped off a week of mourning for the previous Maori king, Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII, who died at age 69 after undergoing heart surgery just days after celebrating the 18th anniversary of his own coronation.
Nga Wai Hono i te Po, the new queen, happens to be his youngest child and only daughter. But the role of monarch is not hereditary: The successor is determined by tribal representatives from across the nation.
Leaders announced on Thursday that they had chosen Nga Wai Hono i te Po, making her the eighth Maori monarch and just the second queen. The first was her grandmother, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, who reigned from 1966 until her death in 2006 (at which point her son became king).
“The new monarch was raised up in a ceremony known as Te Whakawahinga, in front of thousands of people gathered for the tangihanga of Kiingi Tuheitia,” the tribal leaders said in a statement.
A historic bible was placed on Nga Wai Hono i te Po’s head, and a prominent archbishop used sacred oils to “bestow prestige, sacredness, power and spiritual essence” upon her. Then, the visibly emotional queen took a seat on a wooden throne next to her father’s coffin.
The coffin was later paddled — in a traditional canoe flotilla — along the river to Taupiri Mountain, the final resting place of the king and other high-profile Maori, according to CNN.
The ceremonies took place in Tūrangawaewae Marae on the North Island, which is the seat of the Maori King movement.
The political institution developed in the 1850s, when Maori tribes decided to unify under a single sovereign in the face of an influx of British settlers and demand for their land, as well as broader political marginalization.
Today the role of the Maori monarch is largely symbolic. As a former British colony and current member of the British Commonwealth, New Zealand’s official monarch is King Charles.
But the new queen is ascending at a particularly important time: New Zealand’s right-leaning coalition government has faced widespread criticism for dismantling initiatives that benefit indigenous people since taking power last year.
Among other policy changes, it has curbed the use of Maori language in government organizations, closed the Maori Health Authority and rolled back anti-smoking laws (disproportionately hurting the Maori population, which sees higher rates of both smoking and lung cancer).
The late king Tuheitia had urged unity in recent months, including at a January tribal gathering that drew some 10,000 Maori together to discuss how to respond to the government’s plans. His daughter, now the queen, was there by his side.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon paid his respects to the king last week, but did not attend the funeral as he is on an official trip to South Korea, the BBC reports. He wished the new queen well in a tweet on Wednesday.
“As Kiingi Tuheitia makes his final journey from Turangawaewae, we reflect on his legacy and look to the future with hope and anticipation,” he wrote. “We welcome the Upoko Ariki, Ngawai hono i te po, who carries forward the mantle of leadership left by her father.”
Mourners pay their respects to the late Maori King Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII as his coffin is carried toward the Waikato River en route to his final resting place in Hamilton, New Zealand, on Thursday.
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Michael Bradley/Getty Images
The queen has a chin tattoo, a “loud mouth” and a passion for performing arts
Nga Wai Hono i te Po had been favored as her father’s successor, but her selection “was not a foregone conclusion,” according to Radio New Zealand.
She became a more recognizable figure in recent years, accompanying the king on official engagements and serving as his official representative on a 2022 visit to London, where she met with then-Prince Charles.
The trip came over a century after a Maori king traveled to England to meet with Queen Victoria, only to be turned away. Nga Wai Hono i te Po was upfront about her mixed feelings given the painful past between the two countries.
“Although I feel excited about meeting the Prince of Wales, a part of me is still reluctant,” she told the media, in the Maori language. “I have a loud mouth, so I need to be careful.”
Nga Wai Hono i te Po earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Waikato and a master’s degree in Tikanga Maori, generally defined as Maori practices and behaviors, according to 1News.
She has since served as a member on numerous boards, including of the Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust, which is charged with revitalizing the Maori language.
She has long been involved in Kapa Haka, a Maori performing art involving dancing and chanting while standing in rows. She got a job teaching it while in university, and was also part of a Kapa Haka group with which both of her parents had performed, according to Radio New Zealand.
As a student, she told the University of Waikato that Kapa Haka was a huge part of her daily life.
“I walk around my house and I see a taiaha [traditional weapon]. I get into my car and my poi [performance prop] is on the seat,” she said. “I go home to my parents’ house and my little nephew is there and he’s trying to do the Haka. So it is just everywhere. I’ve been brought up in it, I am it.”
Nga Wai Hono i te Po received her chin tattoo — called a moko kauae — at age 19 in 2016, which she said at the time was to acknowledge and support her father’s decade on the throne.
“In the ten years my father has experienced so many things,” she said. “So this is perhaps my gift to him, my moko kauae.”
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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