Philological and Miscellaneous Notes. 



IT IS evident from the language that iron, or perliaps metal of some sort, was not 

 unknown to the Polynesians. The Hawaiians had an ancient, now obselete, word for 

 iron which was incki; the ])resent term hao is comparatively modern and means 

 any hard substance and, conventionally iron. But iiicki is one of those words of wide 

 spread connections which prove its antiquity. We are justified from the facts in assum- 

 ing that in naming and defining the various phenomena of nature, mankind proceeded 

 from generalizations to sj^ecifications or, in other words, it gave a general name to 

 substances of the same nature before it distinguished the differences between those 

 substances by particular names. Thus all metals probably recei\'ed one or more generic 

 names before their differences were noted by specific individual names. Thus with 

 colors; thus with animals; thus with the body or the most prominent parts of the body; 

 thus with trees and fruits, etc. Thus language grew from abstract to concrete terms, 

 and as the primordial races dispersed in tribes and families they carried with them these 

 generic terms, subject to dialectical dift'erences and phonetic corruption, and added to 

 them such concrete terms as their mental development and the circumstances of their 

 new positions might recjuire; and thus in course of time many or most of the generic 

 svnonomous words became s]:)ecific appellations with various tribes. Thus only can I 

 account for the singular fact that in different sections or tribes of the same race the 

 same word frequently signifies diff'erent objects or ideas, although, when a close analysis 

 is possible, those objects will generally be found to have been, or were deemed to be, 

 generally related. For instance, in the Polynesian family of languages, including the 

 pre-Malay dialect of Malaysia, we find the following apparent confusion of terms : 

 Rotti, ngco, black; Batchin, )igoa. black. Hawaii, kca, white, koac, white; North Celebes, 

 kuIoJi, white; Tidore, kiira-clii. yellow. New Zealand, kiira. red; Ceram, marah. iiicrah, 

 blue, and poporolc, yellow; Hawaii, mclc. yellow, and popolo. blue, dark. Thus also in 

 Celebes, bokafi; in Burn, bofi; in Amblaw, puc, and in Amboyna, piiciii. signifies rat. 

 Gilolo, boki; Hawaii, popoki. cat. Burn, babiic; Hawaii, puaa; New Zealand, pnaka. hog. 

 Thus in Irish, baban. child. Arab, babos, the young of either man or beast. 

 Malay, babi, a pig. Baba, father. Celebes, babi-ntsa. pig-deer. Sangvir Islands, baba, 

 a monkey. Latin, piipits. Hence the two English words, babe and pup. 



And thus also in the naming of metals, we see that in the W'elsh iiicffcl and the 

 Greek mctallon the original generic signification of the word metal, or its root, has been 

 retained. Now let us see the diff'erent uses to which this word has been put and the 

 different changes it has undergone: Hindu (Khol), mcdii; Hawaiian, iiicki. iron. 

 Scandinavian, messing; Welsh, pros; Saxon,, bros. brass. German, ciscii, iron; iiicsscr. 

 knife. Malay and Javan, bcsi. busi. bisi; Ethiopian, basal; Celebes, ivasy, asc, iron. 

 Latin, acs, copper. Amboyna, pisi-pittih, silver (literally "white iron"). 



I look upon the Hindu-Khol and Hawaiian terms as the oldest remaining repre- 



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