Manaia is the Maori word for the mythical creature that serves as a spiritual guardian — depicted in Maori carvings as a bird-headed figure with a human body. Worn as a hei-tiki pendant for protection.
Manaia is widely used in New Zealand.
Manaia does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
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In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Manaia reduce to 3, The Communicator. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.