Polynesia And

Melanesia

How the Names Were Given

TO-DAY the islands of the Southern Pacific are divided geographically into three parts: Polynesia, Melan esia and Micronesia, said Rev. Walter Ivens (former travelling Secretary for the Melanesian Mission) in an article published in the “Church Standard” (Sydney) on November 29.

Polynesia is the name given to the eastern groups, Tahiti, Samoa, Tonga, etc.; Melanesia comprises the western portion from Fiji to New Britain through the New Hebrides and the Solomons; Micronesia is the name given to the is lands lying nearest the equator, the Carolines, Marshalls, etc. The three names are Greek, and the last five letters, “nesia”, denote “island’. The first

parts of the names denote respectively. ‘•Many”, “Black”, “Little”.

In the case of the first and third, “Polynesia” and “Micronesia”, there is a decided aptness in the naming, as a glance at any good map will show; but it is evident that there is a departure from strict etymology in the case of “Melanesia”—the islands being green in colour and not black. The name must therefore be considered to mean “Black Islanders”, or “Islands of the black”.

This is to strain the word, undoubtedly, but the excellence of the other two names makes up for the faultiness of the third.

Who was responsible for these three names? On page two of Commodore Erskine’s book “A Cruise Among the Is lands of the Western Pacific”, there is a statement that “Melanesia is the name given by the French to all that tract be tween the meridian of Tonga and New Guinea inhabited by the Polynesian negro races”. The date of Erskine’s voyage was 1849.

The accounts of the voyages of Bougainville, La Perouse and D’Urville, the three French explorers of the Southern Pacific, do not show any use of the name “Melanesia”, though D’Urville does use the term “Polynesie”.

His visit to the Western Pacific took place in 1827, and in 1833 he published a chart which shows the three names used in their present-day connotation. It would seem, then, that we owe the names to him.

There is a tendency nowadays to reckon Melanesia as part of the “South Sea Islands”, but this term was applied originally to the islands of the Eastern Pacific, the first known islands in the “South Seas”, and Melanesia proper, with its heavier rainfall and its malarial conditions, has not the type of climate that one associates with the “South Sea Islands”.

To any one who knows the natives of, say, Mota (Banks Group, New Hebrides), or even of the Solomon Islands, it is obvious that the term “black” is not applicable to the colour of their skins.

On the whole, it is true to say that the average “Melanesian” is chocolate in colour and not black. There are, doubt less, varying shades even of chocolate, but, “nigger brown” is a well-known colour. How, then, came D’Urville to re gard Melanesians as “blacks”?

I think the answer is found in the fact that D’Urville began his naming at Fiji. Commodore Erskine states quite de finitely that certain chiefs of Fiji whom he saw, Thakombau and others, had skins of “a decided black, quite differ ent from the copper colour of the Poly nesians”. To anyone coming from Samoa or Tonga, as D’Urville did, the difference between the light coloured skins of the Polynesians and the darker coloured skins of the Fijians would be very noticeable.

Erskine speaks of “the quantity of hair” on the bodies of the latter, which “give a kind of bluish black tinge”.

We can be grateful, therefore, to Cap tain Dumont D’Urville for giving us the pleasant-sounding names, Polynesia, Mel anesia and Micronesia, even if the sec ond name does not quite fit the chocolate coloured peoples who come under that division.

Mr. E. G. Theodore, head of the Loloma and Emperor mining companies at Vatukuola, Fiji, visited Sydney and Melbourne during November in connec tion with his Australian newspaper in terests.

Miss Helen Goldsbury arrived in Fiji from New Zealand recently to take up a teaching post at the Methodist Mission’s new Ballantine Memorial Girls’ School.

She has had considerable teaching ex perience among Maori girls.