The morepork, also known by numerous other onomatopoeic names, is a smallish, brown owl species found in New Zealand, and to the northwest, on Norfolk Island, an Australian territory. It was also, formerly, found on Lord Howe Island. Three subspecies of the morepork are recognised, one of which is extinct and another that exists only as a hybrid population.

Onomatopoeia is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as oink, meow, roar, and chirp. Onomatopoeia can differ by language: it conforms to some extent to the broader linguistic system. Hence, the sound of a clock may be expressed variously across languages: thus as tick tock in English, tic tac in Spanish and Italian, dī dā in Mandarin, kachi kachi in Japanese, or tik-tik in Hindi and Bengali.