What is the name of Moana's grandmother?

Moana’s grandmother is named Tala.

Tala is Moana’s paternal grandmother and the mother of Chief Tui, Moana’s father. She shares Moana’s love of the ocean and acts as her most understanding spiritual guide. While Tui tries to keep Moana safely within the reef, Tala recognizes that Moana has an important connection to the sea and encourages her to follow her calling.

Tala is crucial to the film’s central mystery. She reveals a hidden cavern filled with voyaging canoes and explains that Motunui’s ancestors were once skilled ocean navigators. The community stopped voyaging after Maui stole the heart of Te Fiti, making the ocean dangerous and leaving the island’s people cut off from their wider heritage.

Rachel House voices Tala in the English-language film and also reprised the role in the Māori-language version. After Tala dies, she returns in spirit form as a manta ray, an image that connects her to the ocean and to Moana’s journey. She is sometimes confused with Sina, who is Moana’s mother, or Te Fiti, the goddess whose heart Moana must restore.