In the Māori language Matariki is both the name of the Pleiades star cluster and also of the season of its first rising in late May or early June—taken as the beginning of the new year. Similar words occur in most Polynesian languages, deriving from Proto-Polynesian *mataliki, meaning minute, small, and the use of the term for the Pleiades constellation is also ancient and has been reconstructed to Eastern Oceanic.
