316 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 



connected by philologists with the Greek adjective Icakos, the equiv- 

 alent of the English word bad. Eden's translation a elaborates 

 Oviedo's original statement to the extent of definitely ascribing this 

 etymology to the Indians, and associating it with the cry of the 

 howling monkey. 



OTHER AMERICAN NAMES OF THE COCONUT. 



It now appears that names other than coco are applied to the 

 coconut by aboriginal Indians. Such names have been found by 

 Prof. H. Pittier among the inhabitants of the southern part of the 

 Central American republic of Costa Rica, where several very primi- 

 tive tribes have hidden themselves in the forest and avoided contact 

 with the Spanish colonists. The name lco-ko is used by the Cabecara, 

 Dorasque, and Guaymi tribes; the Cunas say o-kob, also slightly sug- 

 gestive of copra, while the Bribri and Brunka people have quite dis- 

 tinct terms, sura uo and sia ud, respectively. 



According to Professor Pittier the Brunkas are good sailors, who 

 make voyages of considerable length along the Pacific coast, though 

 they are careful to keep their canoes within sight of land. The 

 Brunkas live not far from the Burica peninsula where Oviedo found 

 the coco palm in special abundance in the early part of the sixteenth 

 century. The Burica district is also the nearest part of the main- 

 land to Cocos Island. That this region possessed at one time a 

 much more advanced civilization is shown by the graves of the adja- 

 cent Chiriqui district of Panama, and other ancient remains dis- 

 covered in the southern part of Costa Rica by Professor Pittier. 



It is to be expected that other native names will be found in the 

 interior districts of South America where the coconut is known to 

 exist, but these regions are still largely unexplored. The native 

 names of the coconut in Brazil, inaiaguacu, recorded by Piso and 

 Marcgrave in Brazil, have been noted in a previous chapter. Accord- 

 ing to Martius the name inaja or inaia is also applied in Brazil to 

 another related palm, Maximiliana. Martius associates the Tupi 

 names for fruits, yba, iba, and ia with such words as nlia or nia, which 

 relate more specifically to the large fruits of the Brazil-nut tree, 

 Bertholletia excelsa, and then points out the similarity to niu, the 

 Hawaiian name of the coconut. 6 



a See footnote a, p. 278. 



& Martius, C. F. P., Beitrage zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika's, 

 vol. 2, p. 417. (Leipzig, 1867.) In Marcgrave's vocabulary of a native Brazilian 

 language, published in 1658, the word nhia is said to signify heart (cor). 



