COOK AND COOK: NAMES OF SWEET POTATOES 339 



ETHNOBOTANY. — Polynesian names of sweet potatoes. O. F. 

 Cook, Bureau of Plant Industry, and Robert Carter Cook. 



The same word, cumara or kumara, serves as a name for the 

 sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) among the Quichua or Inca peo- 

 ple of Peru and in the Polynesian islands. The fact was recog- 

 nized over half a century ago when Seemann recorded the use of 

 the word in Ecuador. In the Urubamba valley of southern 

 Peru, on the eastern slope of the Andes below Cuzco, there are 

 two native names for different classes of sweet potatoes, apichu 

 for the sweet varieties and cumara for those that are merely 

 starchy. 1 



That an important crop plant should have the same name 

 among the Polynesians as in the interior of Peru might be taken 

 as proof of a recent introduction, just as the Polynesian name 

 pooka was taken at first to demonstrate that pigs were brought 

 by Europeans. Later it was pointed out that the Polynesian 

 pigs could not have come from Europe because they belonged to 

 an Asiatic or Malayan species. The name poaka, in spite of its 

 obvious likeness to the Spanish puerco or the English porker, is 

 accepted by the best authorities as a genuine Polynesian word. 



To insist that kumara can not be a Polynesian word because 

 it appears in the Quichua language of Peru would be like saying 

 that puaka could not be Polynesian because the Greeks and 

 Romans had porcus. If kumara, poaka, or other words for par- 

 ticular animals or plants reappear in different languages, the fact 

 needs to be recognized and taken into account in tracing the ori- 

 gins of the domesticated species and their relation to the exten- 

 sion of agriculture in prehistoric times. 



Thus far the word kumara seems not to have been challenged 

 as a foreign element by any student of the Polynesian language. 

 Certainly it does not appear un-Polynesian, in view of the fre- 

 quent occurrence of the sounds and syllables of which it is com- 

 posed. Among such words as kakara (odor), kapura (fire), ka- 

 roro (sea-gull), korora (mussel), mamara (charcoal), marara (fly- 



1 Cook, O. F. Quichua names of the sweet potato. Journ. Wash. Acad. Sci. 

 6: 86. 1916. 



