๐ How Rare Are You in New Zealand?
๐ณ๐ฟ Genetic Landscape of New Zealand
New Zealand's genetic landscape combines indigenous Mฤori Polynesian heritage with British, Irish, and European settler DNA, plus growing Pacific Islander, Asian, and Indian communities. The Mฤori people carry distinctive Polynesian genetic markers from their epic ocean migration from eastern Polynesia ~700 years ago. British and Irish genetics dominate the European-descended majority. This Pacific-European blend creates a uniquely diverse genetic profile for such a small nation.
Distance is the organising fact here. These islands were among the last large habitable landmasses humans reached, so every population on them is young by world standards. Mฤori identity is organised through iwi and hapลซ rather than one national ancestry, and a single iwi, Ngฤi Tahu, is associated with most of the South Island. European settlement arrived in identifiable clumps: Scottish Presbyterians founded Dunedin, Canterbury began as an Anglican colonising scheme, Dalmatian gum-diggers worked the Northland kauri fields, and Chinese miners came for the Otago goldfields. Dutch families followed after the Second World War. Auckland now holds one of the largest Polynesian populations of any city, and more Niueans and Cook Islanders live in New Zealand than on the islands themselves.
๐ Three Questions, Three Different Counts
The 2023 Census individual form asked three separate questions here: “Which ethnic group do you belong to?”, “Are you descended from Mฤori (that is, did you have a Mฤori birth parent, grandparent or great-grandparent, etc)?”, and — only of people who answered yes or don’t know to that second one — “Do you know the name(s) of your iwi (tribe or tribes)?”. The first two do not come back with the same number. Of the 4,993,923 people in the 2023 census usually resident population count, 978,246 were of Mฤori descent, 887,493 identified with the Mฤori ethnic group, and 857,652 were both.
Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa says why. Ethnicity “is a measure of cultural affiliation, as opposed to race, ancestry, nationality, or citizenship”, it is self-perceived, and anyone naming more than one group is counted in each, so the responses in a table come to more than the number of respondents. Descent is a different question, and its “Don’t know” is a real answer rather than a leftover bin. Iwi affiliation is published only for people of Mฤori descent, 2.5 percent of whom ended up in a residual category. Elections use a fourth variable again, Mฤori descent (electoral), which has two categories and no “Don’t know” — under the Electoral Act 1993 census counts are used to calculate electoral populations and determine the number of electorates.
๐๏ธ Eye Color
| Blue | 42% |
| Brown | 22% |
| Green | 15% |
| Hazel | 13% |
| Gray | 8% |
๐ Hair Color
| Brown | 28% |
| Dark Brown | 22% |
| Blonde | 18% |
| Black | 18% |
| Red | 5% |
| Gray | 9% |
๐ฉธ Blood Type
| O+ | 38% |
| A+ | 32% |
| B+ | 8% |
| AB+ | 3% |
| O- | 8% |
| A- | 7% |
| B- | 2% |
| AB- | 2% |
Trait frequencies on this page come from public and institutional datasets โ see Data Sources.
🧮 Calculate Your Rarity in New Zealand
Pick your eye colour, hair colour and blood type. The calculator uses New Zealand's own figures from the tables above, not world averages.
This is an estimate, not a measurement. It multiplies three national frequencies as if they were independent, and they are not: eye and hair colour share pigmentation genes, so a combination that tends to run together, such as blue eyes with blonde hair, is more common than the multiplication suggests, while one that rarely does, such as blue eyes with black hair, is rarer. Blood type is independent of both. The frequencies are national averages from public datasets — see Data Sources.
That number describes the body you were born with. Fraeon, our other site, does the same arithmetic for the part you chose: the films, series, games, books, anime and manga you have actually finished. Start your log →
๐ The Holiday Parliament Had to Write Out Thirty-One Times
New Zealand’s twelfth public holiday has no fixed date, so Parliament wrote thirty-one of them into law. The Te Kฤhui o Matariki Public Holiday Act 2022 says a public holiday is observed “on each date specified in Schedule 1”, and Schedule 1 lists one date a year from 24 June 2022 to 21 June 2052. The Act quotes the Matariki Advisory Group: the cluster makes its “eastern pre-dawn appearance” “during the last quarter of the lunar month of Pipiri”. The same passage records that some tribal groups mark the new year by another star, Puanga (Rigel), instead.
When the list runs out, someone has to extend it. Section 6 lets the Governor-General add dates by Order in Council, but each must be a Friday, must fall in a calendar year following the last one listed, and the Order must be made at least four years before that last date. The Act is drafted in te reo Mฤori first, with the English following under the heading “Provisions in English”. Schedule 2 changes section 43(a) of the Holidays Act 2003 from “11 public holidays” to “12 public holidays”.
๐ The Sixty-Four Registrations That Were Turned Down
Not every name gets registered. Section 18 of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 2021 lets the Registrar-General decline one, and prints the test: a name is undesirable in the public interest if it “might cause offence to a reasonable person”, is “unreasonably long”, or “is, includes, or resembles an official title or rank (without adequate justification)”. The Department of Internal Affairs released the 2023 list in January 2024: 64 registrations declined. Prince was the most declined name, five times, ending a run of 13 years in which King held that spot.
The same section sets the shape of a name: a birth record must carry “1 name as the person’s surname and 1 or more other names” — unless the religious or philosophical beliefs, or cultural traditions, of the person, a parent or a living guardian require a single name, which the Act allows. The Registrar-General’s published tips add a ceiling of 70 characters including spaces, and no numeric characters or symbols. Related: how rare is my name.
โญ Rare Facts About New Zealand
Where the New Zealand numbers come from
Population: Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa, 5,357,300 residents (provisional, 30 June 2026); the 2023 Census counted 4,993,923. The census wording and counts above are Stats NZ’s; the name rules come from the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 2021 and the declined-name figures from the Department of Internal Affairs; the holiday dates from the Act itself. The eye colour, hair colour and blood group splits have no such source — the census asks about ethnicity, Mฤori descent and iwi, not eye or hair colour — so treat them as estimates. See Data Sources. Last checked September 2026.