Williams. — Scientific Study of Maori Names. 855 



designates by rino, mailai, or piauau. The latter is also the name of a hard 

 stone used formerly for making axe-heads. Rino might be supposed to be 

 an anagram from " iron," but this origin must be dismissed. Maitai is a 

 true Polynesian word, meaning "good." It was in use in the north of this 

 Island a hundred years ago, and is still current in Tahiti and elsewhere. 

 There can be very little doubt that Tupaea, Cook's Tahitian interpreter, in 

 bartering nails with the Maoris, referred to them as maitai (good), and the 

 Maoris, unfamiliar with the word, assumed that it was the name of this new 

 treasure. 



The potato has been thoroughly adopted by the Maori, who, while there 

 was nothing to prevent him from pronouncing " potato," has preferred 

 to designate the same by pareie, -parareka, riwai, Jiiwai, taewa, kapana, 

 or popoia. The first of these is no doubt " praty " ; the second may have 

 a reference to the para tuber formerly eaten by the Maoris ; but the rest 

 seem to have been simply inventions to meet the necessity.* These are 

 general names for potatoes ; and when the question of varieties is entered 

 upon, the Maori tongue is as prolific of names as a seedsman's catalogue. 



The names applied to the local flora and fauna afford illustrations of the 

 methods adopted by the Maori in fixing his nomenclature. It is not sur- 

 prising to find many instances of words generic in their scope which the 

 Maori uses in common with other Polynesian dialects. But numerous 

 examples might be given where specific names with a range over a large 

 part of Polynesia are still current in New Zealand. It will be found that 

 the Maori colonist acted very much as later European ones have done, 

 and applied names generally to similar or allied plants and birds, but was 

 not tied by any strict rules, and so occasionally transferred the name to 

 something widely difterent from that to which it had been applied in the 

 past. A few names in each group must suffice us. The karaka is stated 

 in some of the ancient legends to have been brought here by the Maoris 

 when they came ; but it is not found outside New Zealand and the Chat- 

 ham Islands, the name elsewhere being applied to a different tree. The 

 hibiscus {fau or hau in the Pacific) supplied the name whau for the Entelea 

 arborescens . The kava {Piper methysticimi), well known throughout Poly- 

 nesia, appears here as kawakawa (Piper excelsmn), another species of the 

 same genus. Kiekie (the Maori name for Freycinetia Bavksii) is in some 

 of the islands the name for other species of the Freycinetia, and in some 

 for the pandanus ; while fara (the name for the pandanus in others of the 

 islands) supplies the Maori name for the edible bracts of the kiekie, which 

 are called tawhara. A large number of plants and trees have names which 

 cannot be traced in other islands, but which must originally have had a 

 signification which made them appropriate to the plants to which they 

 have been applied. 



It is somewhat difficult from the dictionaries available to identify the 

 fishes which are mentioned. It will be sufficient, therefore, to record that 

 a large number of the fish-names are easily recognizable as Polynesian in 

 their origin, and that some of those are applied to fish which are identical 

 with or similar to tlose in other parts of the Pacific. 



With biids identification is much simpler. Some six hundred names 

 have been recorded for the 120 birds we have here. The distribution of the 

 names is very unequal. For some sea-birds no Maori name has been 



* Some lii'ht may be thrown on taewa by a note in Kendall and Lee (n. 10'/), that 

 Taiwa, or Stivers, was " a man who is said to have visited the Bay of Islands before 

 Captain Cook." 



12* 



