What is "hori"

Höri is a municipality in the district of Bülach in the canton of Zürich in Switzerland, and belongs to the Glatt Valley (German: Glattal).

Hori may refer to:

• Hori (surname), a Japanese surname
• Hori (company), a Japanese manufacturer of video game peripherals
• Hori (music), a genre of semiclassical Indian music
• Hori (racial slur), a derogatory term for the Māori people of New Zealand

Hori is a genre of semi-classical singing, popular in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. It can be adorned with a Bhairavi, Thumri etc.

It comes in the series of season songs, like Chaiti, Sawani and Kajari, and is traditionally sung in the villages and towns of Uttar Pradesh: around Banaras, Mirzapur, Mathura, Allahabad and the Bhojpur regions of Bihar.

Hori (written: 堀 or 保利) is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include:

• , Japanese writer

• , Japanese samurai

• , Japanese voice actor

• , Japanese kickboxer

• , Japanese actress and voice actress

• , Japanese footballer

• , Japanese baseball player

• , Japanese politician

• , Japanese samurai

• Naoto Hori (born 1964), Japanese footballer

• , Japanese dollmaker

• Shigeyuki Hori, Japanese automotive engineer

• , Japanese footballer and manager

• , Japanese writer, poet and translator

• , Japanese politician

• , Japanese chief executive

• , Japanese voice actor

The term Hori is an offensive derogatory term for a person of Māori descent. The term comes from a transliteration of the English name George, which was very popular during the early years of European colonisation of New Zealand. By means of synecdoche, the term came to be ascribed firstly to any unknown male Māori, and then as a negative epithet to all male Māori. The level of offence implied by the use of the term has varied over time and, of course, with context.

The term has a second, equally derogatory meaning as an adjective, referring to something that is broken, false, or in poor condition.

The usage as a derogatory term for Māori grew with the increasing urbanisation of Māori and is still common, though its usage may be less than in past decades.

In the early 1960s the Pākehā writer W. Norman McCallum published several bestselling comedic books under the pseudonym "Hori". The pseudonym was chosen as a typical Māori name, and the books depicted Māori as overweight, lazy, and happy-go lucky.

As with the equivalent term " nigger" in the United States, the term has to some extent been "reclaimed" within the community which it was originally intended to insult, especially in street slang. It is often meant as a term of endearment amongst Māori or as a signifier of "keeping it real". An example is the musical group A Hori Buzz, the frontman of which states he chose the name for its Māori humor.