Suffixation as a Place Naming Strategy in the Central Pacific and its Implications for Prehistory

Abstract

This article uses comparative linguistic data to arrive at some generalizations about the place naming practices of the early inhabitants of the Central Pacific (Fiji, Rotuma, and Polynesia) who are believed to have arrived there some three thousand years ago. In particular it focuses on a pair of suffixes, -(C)a and -(C)aga, that had similar functions of nominalization and were therefore used quite extensively in various types of derivation, including place naming. Many place names so formed are indicators of the environment that prevailed when the place was named, so have great potential value in the reconstruction of prehistory.

KEYWORDS:

• island place names
• suffix
• Fiji
• Central Pacific
• place naming practices

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to the two sponsors of the 2001 “Cosmology and Society in Western Polynesia (including Fiji)” conference, i.e. the Sainsbury Research Unit (SRU) of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, and the Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur l’Océanie (CREDO) of the Université de Provence, Marseilles, France, for their generous financial support and encouragement; and to the SRU for the visiting research fellowship that enabled the author to write the first draft of this paper. The author also thanks Malcolm Ross, John Lynch, and Jan Tent for very helpful comments on earlier drafts. The usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

1. This is a revised and expanded version of a paper presented in May 2001 at a conference in Marseilles on “Cosmology and Society in Western Polynesia (including Fiji)”, and published in Rongorongo Studies (Geraghty 2001).

2. An “allomorph” is one of two or more spoken or written forms representing a particular unit of grammar smaller than the word, e.g. -en in taken and -ed in removed are among the allomorphs of the past participle.

3. “Nominalization” is the process by which a noun is formed from some other part of speech.

4. The symbol * in historical linguistics is used to indicate a form that has never actually been heard or written, but which is inferred or reconstructed in a protolanguage on the basis of available evidence. Note also: Standard Modern Fijian has five pairs of vowels, long and short /i, e, a, o, u/, seven diphthongs /iu, ei, eu, oi, ou, ai, au/, and 18 consonants /p, t, k, ^mb, ⁿd, ^ŋɡ, f, s, β, ð, m, n, ŋ, ⁿr, l, r, y, w/. Orthographic b = /^mb/, d = /ⁿd/, q = /^ŋɡ/, v = /β/, c = /ð/, g = /ŋ/, d = /ⁿr/, j = /tʃ/, and y = /j/. Orthographic vowels with a macron (e.g. ā, ē) indicate a long vowel. These orthographic conventions are also used in this paper for other Pacific languages.

5. A “reflex” is a word, part of a word, syllable, etc. derived from an earlier form.

6. A “locative” has the function of indicating location.

7. A closing quotation mark ’ word initially or medially is the orthographic symbol for a glottal stop (indicated in phonetics by [ʔ]).

8. The symbol < means “derived from”.

9. k.o. “kind of”.

10. “Reduplication” refers to the exact or partial repetition of a word, syllable, or phrase in order to express a grammatical feature, as, for example, in the formation of the plural.