thumb|right|Ureia, guardian taniwha of the Hauraki Gulf|Hauraki people. Carving from the meeting house Hotunui, 1878 In Māori mythology, taniwha () are large supernatural beings that live in deep pools in rivers, dark caves, or in the sea, especially in places with dangerous currents or deceptive breakers (giant waves). They may be considered highly respected kaitiaki (protective guardians) of people and places, or in some traditions as dangerous, predatory beings, which for example would kidnap women to have as wives.
thumb|right|Ureia, guardian taniwha of the Hauraki Gulf|Hauraki people. Carving from the meeting house Hotunui, 1878 In Māori mythology, taniwha () are large supernatural beings that live in deep pools in rivers, dark caves, or in the sea, especially in places with dangerous currents or deceptive breakers (giant waves). They may be considered highly respected kaitiaki (protective guardians) of people and places, or in some traditions as dangerous, predatory beings, which for example would kidnap women to have as wives.
==Etymology and Pacific analogues== Linguists have reconstructed the word taniwha to Proto-Oceanic *tanifa, with the meaning "shark species". In Tongan and Niuean, tenifa refers to a large dangerous shark, as does the Samoan tanifa; the Tokelauan tanifa is a sea-monster that eats people. In most other Polynesian languages, the cognate words refer to sharks or simply fish.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).