| Niu
Palm tree, coconut tree; hua niu, coconut.
Vanaga. T. 1. Coconut palm. 2. Sign for peace. Henry
Coconut, palm, spinning top. P Pau., Ta.:
niu, coconut. Mgv.:
niu, a top;
niu mea, coconut. Mq.:
niu, coconut, a top.
Churchill. The sense of top lies in the fact that the bud end
of a coconut shell is used for spinning, both in the sport of
children and as a means of applying to island life the practical
side of the doctrine of chances. Thus it may be that in New Zealand,
in latitudes higher than are grateful to the coconut, the divination
sense has persisted even to different implements whereby the
arbitrament of fate may be declared. Churchill 2.
The fruit of miro.
Buck.
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Miro
1. Wood, stick; also (probably
improperly) used for 'tree': miro tahiti, a tree
from Tahiti (Melia azedarach); miro huru iti,
shrub. 2. Wooden vessel (canoe, boat); today pahú
(a Tahitian word) is more used, especially when speaking
of modern boats. 3. Name of the tribe, of royal blood,
descended from Ariki Hotu Matu'a. Vanaga.
Miro-oone, model boat made of
earth in which the 'boat festivals' used to be
celebrated. Vanaga.
... on the
first day of the year the natives dress in navy uniforms
and performs exercises which imitate the maneuvers of
ships' crews ... Métraux.
Tree, plant, wood, plank, ship,
building; miro hokuhoku, bush, thicket; miro
takataka, bush; miro tupu, tree; miro
vavau, switch. Miroahi, firebrand. Mimiro,
compass, to roll one over another, to turn in a circle.
P Pau.: miro, to rope. Churchill.
1. Wood. 2. Ship. Ko te rua o te
raa i tu'i ai te miro ki Rikitea tupuaki ki Magareva,
on the second day the boat arrived at Rikitea which is
close to Mangareva. He patu mai i te puaka mo ma'u ki
ruga ki te miro, they corralled the cattle in order
to carry them on to the boat. Krupa.
T. 1. The tree Thespesia populnea.
... a fine tree with bright-green heart-shaped leaves
and a yellow flower resembling that of the fau,
but not opening wide. The fruit is hemispherical and
about twice the size of a walnut, consisting of brittle
shell in which are several septa, each containing a
single seed. The wood resembles rosewood and is of much
the same texture. Formerly, this tree was held sacred.
Henry. 2. Rock. (To'a-te-miro =
Long-standing-rock.) Henry. |
Nikau
Mgv.: The coco palm. Ta.:
niau, coconut leaf. Ha.:
niau, stem of the coconut
leaf. Ma.: nikau, an
areca palm. Churchill.
Mgv.:
niu,
the coconut palm when young, ripening into
nikau.
... the ni of New Caledonia leads us to infer that niu
was anciently a composite in which ni carried at least some
sort of generic sense, it being understood that
this
refers to those characteristics which might strike the islanders as
indicating a genus. In composition with kau tree we should
then see nikau, the ni-tree, serving in Mangareva for
the coconut
palm, in New Zealand for the characteristic palm (Areca sapida)
of that land, in Tahiti as niau for coconut leaf, and as
niau in Hawaii for the leaf stalk of the coconut. The ni-form
is found in Micronesia, and in the Marshall Islands ni is the
coconut. Churchill 2.
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Ni(k)a
"Savage tribes knew the Pleiades
familiarly, as well as did the people of ancient and
modern civilization; and Ellis wrote of the natives of
the Society and Tonga Islands, who called these stars
Matarii, the Little Eyes: The two seasons of the
year were divided by the Pleiades; the first, Matarii
i nia, the Pleiades Above, commenced when, in the
evening, those stars appeared on the horizon, and
continued while, after sunset, they were above. The
other season, Matarii i raro, the Pleiades Below,
began when, at sunset, they ceased to be visible, and
continued till, in the evening, they appeared again
above the horizon.
Gill gives a similar
story from the Hervey group, where the Little Eyes are
Matariki, and at one time but a single star, so
bright that their god Tane in envy got hold of
Aumea, our Aldebaran, and, accompanied by Mere,
our Sirius, chased the offender, who took refuge in a
stream. Mere,
however, drained off the water, and Tane hurled
Aumea at the fugitive, breaking him into the six
pieces that we now see, whence the native name for the
fragments, Tauono, the Six, quoted by Flammarion
as Tau, both titles singularly like the Latin
Taurus. They were the favorite one of the various
avelas, or guides at sea in night voyages from one
island to another; and, as opening the year, objects of
worship down to 1857, when Christianity prevailed
throughout these islands." (Allen) |
| Kau
1. To move one's feet (walking or
swimming); ana oho koe, ana kau i te va'e, ka
rava a me'e mo kai, if you go and move your
feet, you'll get something to eat; kakau (or
also kaukau), move yourself swimming. 2. To
spread (of plants): ku-kau-áte kumara, the
sweet potatoes have spread, have grown a lot. 3. To
swarm, to mill around (of people): ku-kau-á te
gagata i mu'a i tou hare, there's a crowd of
people milling about in front of your house. 4. To
flood (of water after the rain): ku-kau-á te vai
haho, the water has flooded out (of a container
such as a taheta). 5. To increase, to
multiply: ku-kau-á te moa, the chickens have
multiplied. 6. Wide, large: Rano Kau, 'Wide
Crater' (name of the volcano in the southwest corner
of the island). 7. Expression of admiration:
kau-ké-ké! how big! hare kau-kéké! what a
big house! tagata hakari kau-kéké! what a
stout man! Vanaga.
To bathe, to swim; hakakau,
to make to swim. P Pau., Mgv., Mq.: kau, to
swim. Ta.: áu, id. Kauhaga, swimming.
Churchill.
The
stem kau does not appear independently in any
language of Polynesian proper. For tree and for
timber we have the composite
lakau in various stages of transformation.
But kau will also be
found
as an initial component of various tree names. It is
in Viti that we first find it in free existence. In
Melanesia this form is rare. It occurs as kau
in Efaté, Sesake, Epi, Nguna, and perhaps may be
preserved in Aneityum; as gau in Marina; as
au in Motu and somewhere in the Solomon
islands. The triplicity of the Efaté forms [kasu,
kas, kau] suggests a possible
transition. Kasu and kas are easy to
be correlated, kasu and kau less easy.
They might be linked by the assumption of a parent
form kahu, from which each might derive. This
would appear in modern Samoan as kau; but I
have found it the rule that even the mildest
aspirate in Proto-Samoan becoming extinct in modern
Samoan is yet retained as aspiration in Nuclear
Polynesia and as th in Viti, none of which
mutations is found on this record. Churchill 2 |
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