340 CCOK and cook: names of sweet potatoes 



ing-fish), tauama (outrigger canoe), and tamara (palm leaves), 

 kumara seems fairly at home. It is also very widely distributed, 

 with only slight modifications, conforming with the changes of 

 consonant sounds in some of the dialects. The following varia- 

 tions of the word are brought together by Tregear: kumaa 

 (Marquesas), kumala (Tonga), uala (Hawaii), umala (Samoa), 

 umara (Tahiti), uwala (Hawaii), with kumara recorded for New 

 Zealand, Rarotonga, Easter Island, Mangareva, and Paumotu. 

 Hooarra was recorded as the Hawaiian name of the sweet potato 

 in 1778, by Captain Cook's expedition. 



Possible cognates or derivatives of kumara are numerous in 

 the Maori language, including kumanu, to tend carefully; ku- 

 more, cape or headland; kumete, dish, bowl, or trough; kume, to 

 pull out; kumu, to draw back. Whakakumu is the name of one 

 of the New Zealand varieties of sweet potato, and kumu also 

 means fist, or portions of food squeezed out with the hand. The 

 growing sweet potato crop was called maara in New Zealand, 

 reminding of malla, the Quichua word for a young plant. Ka- 

 mala is a word for thatch in Hawaii, where kumara vines were 

 often used for this purpose. Kalau is another Hawaiian word 

 which means either a thatch of leaves or vines of sweet potatoes, 

 or to work inefficiently, the sweet potato materials being but 

 poorly adapted to the purpose. Kalina is defined by Andrews as 

 "old potato vines that have done bearing," or "a garden of po- 

 tatoes where the old refuse potatoes only remain." Kalina and 

 ilina, the latter meaning burial-place in Hawaii, are suggestive 

 of the Quichua word illuni, meaning to dig for roots. Other 

 Quichua words are cullquini, meaning "to dig with a stick," 

 and culluna, a silo or subterranean storehouse. 



In New Zealand the words kapuka and kepura are both said to 

 mean "a handful of potatoes." Two native New Zealand plants, 

 Pomaderris elliptica and Quintonia serrata, are called kumarahou, 

 but the relation to kumara is not indicated. Hau is a general 

 name for Paritium tiliaceum, a shrub widely cultivated among 

 the Polynesians for the sake of its fibrous bark. 



In Hawaii, where the name of the sweet potato is softened into 

 uala, the same word is applied to the large muscles of the upper 



