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Interestingly, the meaning is not yet settled.
Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori (the Māori Language Commission) suggests it could mean a large calabash for storing pāua; or a large shellfish; or a fish hook with a piece of pāua shell inserted to attract fish; or even a variety of large kumara.
It is also interesting to point out that there have been over 18 variations of the spelling since it's creation as a written word, with the version we use today as the one most recently agreed to by the Māori Language Commission.
Note that a macron (the mark above a letter such as ā or ō) changes the meaning of a word. So 'taha' refers to the edge of something but 'tahā-nui' means a large calabash.
From the point of view of the editor (from the 2012 committee onwards) the word Pāuatahanui could be a combination of:
'pāua' - Māori for the well loved shellfish but possibly referring to the overall shape of the Inlet;
'taha' - Māori for side or edge;
'nui' - Māori for large.
In combination, these Māori words could refer to the larger of two streams that flow into the Inlet at it's eastern edge. The first, Pāua-taha-nui, passes south of the original Matai-taua pā established by Rangihaeata. This was the original feature to which the words apply, not the Inlet itself.
In contrast, a smaller stream, located to the north of the pā which was on the current site of St Albans Anglican church, could be Pāua-taha-iti. It enters the eastern edge of the Inlet just east of Ration Point and today is known as Ration Creek. This stream is referred to in the 1990 Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand*. In this issue there is an old map of the Inlet that labels the stream as Pauataha-iti, a label given by Joseph Boulton who established the first hotel in the village in 1847. With both streams identified in this way, it seems only too obvious how the modern name came about.
(*Ref: George Eiby (1990) Changes to Porirua Harbour in about 1855 : historical tradition and geological evidence, Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 20:2, 233-248, DOI: 10.1080/03036758.1990.10426727)
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