The little point at right is pro

The other day, while reading Heyerdahl 3 (page 102), I found that a name for the planet Mars in the Rapa Nui language was Matamea. I guess we could translate it into Red Eye or something similar, i.e. quite in agreement with other Polynesian names for Mars.

Vanaga confirms: Matamea = "Mars, a planet held to be of bad portent."

Furthermore: Mea = "1. tonsill, gill (of fish). 2. red (probably because it is the colour of gills); light red, rose; also meamea. 3. to grow or to exist in abundance in a place or around a place: ku-mea-á te ma ka, bananas grow in abundance (in this place); ku-mea-á te ka, there is plenty of fish (in a stretch of the coast or the sea); ku-mea-á te tai, the tide is low and the sea completely calm (good for fishing); mau mea, abundance."

The expression ku-mea-á te ka might be a wordplay where ika (fish) has lost the initial i in order to change the sense from te ika (the fish) in to teka (a dart). We should expect much such wordplay.

Teka. Tekai, curl, a round ball, as of twine. (Tekateka) hakatekateka, rudder, helm. Churchill. Routledge's informants still knew the names of the immigrant canoes (RM:278); they were given as 'Oteka' and 'Oua'. One Rongorongo text shows ua as the term used for two canoes, while RR:76 [Barthel's no. 76, GD111] (phallus grapheme ure, used in this case for an old synonym teka; compare TUA. teka 'penis of a turtle', HAW. ke'a 'virile male') tends to confirm the oral tradition with a transpositional variant (Barthel 1962:134). (Barthel 2). Pau. teka, arrow. Ta.: tea, id. Mq.: teka, a game with darts. Sa.: te'a, id. Ma.: teka, id. Churchill. Mgv. teka, a support, scaffold. Ta.: tea, the horizontal balk of a palisade, the crossbeam of a house. Mq.: tekateka, across, athwart. Ha.: kea, a cross. Churchill. 65 - ono tekau ma rima illustrates how in the Maori dialect tekau stands for 10. Harawira.

... Tu'i Tofua was the son of Vakafuhu. His mother was Langitaetaea, but she was only one of the many young women whom Vakafuhu had living behind the fences of his dwelling.

When Tu'i Tofua grew he was given the first-born sons of all the wives for his companions, and they all used to play sika outside the enclosure of Vakafuhu. They made their sika of clean-peeled sticks and threw them in turns along the ground, they glanced them off a mound and each one tried to make the longest throw. One day while Vakafuhu was sleeping off a kava-drinking those boys were playing their game outside, and Tu'i Tofua threw his sika. Then indeed the enormous strength of Tu'i Tofua made that sika fly over the fences into his father's place. It landed where the women were and they all began to giggle, those girls, and shriek and laugh.

They did this because they wanted that handsome youth to come among them, they desired him. More than his father they desired him. They fell with joy upon the sika of their master's son, and snapped it.

When he came inside to get it back they called out things that made him embarrassed. 'Haven't you got another long thing there, Tu'i?' those women said. 'This one's broken.' And they put their hands across their faces and they laughed ...