... The great 'wandering chief' who is said to have discovered the Hawaiian islands is alluded to as Hawaii-loa, or 'Hawaii-the-great', (but his name is also repeatedly given as Ke Kowa-o-Hawaii, or 'The Straits of Hawaii'. (Fornander 1878, Vol. I, p. 23, 25.) The island Hawaii was named after this mythical wanderer, and hence the name must be a very ancient one brought to Hawaii by its early settlers.

Fornander himself was sufficiently familiar with the Polynesian predilection for allegories and symbolic names to realize that 'the Straits of Hawaii' was merely a poetical device, a descriptive mythical name personified in the local discoverer, and he proceeded to trace its possible origin. He and others have shown that Hawaii, alias Hawaiki, is a composite name, consisting of a root with the suffix ii, alias iki. Iki is the original form, and ii the result of a later dropping of the letter k.

Philologists have suggested two possible meanings for this suffix; on one hand 'small' or 'little'; on the other 'furious' or 'raging' as referring to a volcano in eruption. The improbability of the first of these meanings is apparent from the old Polynesian use of words like Hawaii-loa and Hawaii-nui, which would produce the senseless suffix 'Little-Great'. And, as shown by Fornander (Ibid., p. 6), a Marquesan tradition shows plainly that ii refers to a volcano: '... in a chant of that people, referring to the wanderings of their forefathers, and giving a description of that special Hawaii on which they once dwelt, it is mentioned as Tai mamao, uta oa tu te Ii - a distant sea (or far off region), away inland stands the volcano (the furious, the raging).'

According to Henry (1928, p. 115), also Tahitian folklore often spoke of Hawaii Island as Havai'i-a, or 'Burning Havai'i', due to its volcano which was formerly always brightly burning.

Thereupon Fornander and others with him removed the epithet ii or iki, and looked to the west for a place-name equivalent to Hawa (of Hawaii), Sava (of Savaii), or Hapa (of Hapaii). Suspicion naturally fell on Java, and the name of this island was by many considered the clue to the 'whence' of the Maori-Polynesian ancestors. After jumping a good 6,000 miles from Hawii to Java, he then took a further leap of 5,000 miles back to Zaba, the early seat of Cushite empire in Arabia, as the ancestral starting point. However, finding nowhere any 'Strait' with a name equivalent to Hawa or Hawaii, Fornander (p. 25) simply suggests that the allegoric reference to the Hawaiian discoverer as 'the Straits of Hawaii' must refer to the Hawaiian memory of a now lost name for the Straits of Sunda between Java and Sumatra. Here the question was left.

Taking up Fornander's original clue, the present author suspected that Hawai (or Savai, Hapai) might have been the old root from which the name sprang, rather than Hawa. As stated earlier, Whatonga's legendary canoe in Hawaiki was named Te Hawai, not Te Hawa nor Te Hawaiki; and in Hawaii ancient place-names like Kaha-hawai, Puna-hawai, etc. are found. Even more suggestive is the fact that, as stated, the epithet ii or iki refers to a raging, active volcano, of which there are none in Polynesia outside the Hawaiian and Samoan groups and New Zealand. There are two in Hawaii in the Hawaiian Group, and another in Savaii, but there is none in Hapai in the Tonga Islands. Therefore, Hawaii and Savaii, but not Hapai, have been given the suffix ii, denoting a volcano. Yet, even without the ii, this Tonga island is known as Hapai and not as Hapa, quite in keeping with the name of Whatonga's canoe Te Hawai from Hawaiki. The reduction of a consonant, changing Hawaiki to Hawai'i and Hapaiki to Hapai'i, is a well known process in Polynesian speech, but no Polynesian dialect would abbreviate Hapai'i to Hapai. On the other hand, Hapai may very well be the root of Hapai-iki, and the canoe Te Hawai may be the root of Te Hawai-iki. Recalling at the same time the marked softening tendency throughout Polynesian speech, the p in Hapai is obviously an older form than w in Hawai. On these premises I resumed the search outside Polynesia for Hapai, or even for the more guttural Hakai.

In a general world atlas (Philip 1934, p. 191) I checked up on the principal straits between the islands in the Northwest American Archipelago, and, between the Hunter and Calvert Islands, right in the midst of the Kwakiutl territory, was the Hakai Strait. If Hakai had been, for instance, in Europe or Argentina, or if it had been a mountain-ridge or an island, instead of a principal strait among the Northwest Indians of the particular Kwakiutl tribe, then it might well have been attributed to simple coincidence. But if we are actually looking for a certain strait with a certain name, located between the limited number of islands in Kwakiutl territory, and we actually find it there, that it be coincidence can no longer be considered ...

... There are still traces to-day of some ancient habitation on the coast of the Hakai Strait, although in historic times it has only served the surrounding tribes as a dependable fishing-ground and source of food. It may be worth while to note that in the dialect of the Marquesan islanders hakai means 'to feed'. In Easter Island the word reappears as hagai, which means 'to feed, to nourish'; and at Mangareva as agai, 'to give food to'.

In the Marquesas kai and kai-kai means to 'eat'; and on the Northwest Coast kaik (Tsimsyan) and ka-aia (Tlingit) means 'belly'; and ka-ta (Haida) means to 'eat'. We have ample reason to suspect that the particular Hawai or Hapai Strait alluded to in the symbolic name of the Hawaiian discoverer is the Hakai Strait, the direct geographical link between the tribes driven away from prehistoric Bella Coola and those driven ashore in prehistoric Hawaii. It is well worth noticing that in historic times it is among the surrounding Kwakiutl and not among the Bella Coola intruders, that we find the main bulk of Maori-Polynesian analogies; also that the Kwakiutl, according to Drucker's survey, represent the purest - and together with the Nootka perhaps also the oldest - aboriginal coast-dwellers in the present Northwest Indian habitat ...

To speak, to talk, to pronounce; conversation, talk, word, language; he vânaga i te vânaga rapanui, to speak Rapanui; vânaga reoreo, lies, lying words, falsehoods. Vanavanaga, to talk at length; useless talk. Vanaga.

To speak, to say, to chat, to discourse, to address, to recount, to reply, to divulge, to spread a rumor; argument, conversation, formula, harangue, idiom, locution, verb, word, recital, response, speech; vanaga roroa, chatterbox, babbler; rava vanaga, candid, babbler; tae vanaga, discreet; tai vanaga, ripple; vanagarua (vanaga - rua 1), echo. P Pau.: vanaga, to warn by advice. Mgv.: vanaga, orator, noise, hubbub, tumult. Mq.: vanaa, orator, discourse, counsel, advice. Churchill.