Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/61

Rh by many names of places, sovereigns, and chiefs, and by the histories of some of the Malayan races.

"The name Java, Jaba, Saba, Zaba, Jawa, Hawa, is the same word, which is used for rice-fields which are irrigated. The word is primarily connected with the flowing of water." (In a note he adds) "Sawa, Jawa, Saba, Jaba, etc., has evidently in all times been the capital local name in Indonesia.… The Bugis apply the name Jawa, Jawaka, to the Molukas."

The above quotation from Mr. Logan shows what an accomplished linguist and philologist considers to be the origin of the name Hawaiki (or Savaiki, for "h" and "s" are convertible letters, as are "w" and "v" in the Polynesian language) and his further remarks bear on one or more of the secondary Hawaikis, as we shall have to refer to later on. But the quotation is given here in order to assist in arriving at a meaning for the name. Mr. Edward Tregear has probably gone deeper into the origin of this and other names than anyone else, and briefly his conclusion is "That the names of the lands of Polynesian origin, such as Hawaiki, Yaringa, Paliuli, and Atia, are derived from words used for varieties of food, but primarily of grain. The grain-name was applied to barley, millet, wheat, etc., by the western natives, but to the rice by the people of India and the tribes moving eastward. It became in time not only a designation of the cereals themselves but of the soil in which they grew, and the methods of irrigation, etc." I cannot exactly agree with Mr. Logan that the iki in Hawaiki, means little, otherwise it would be—in Maori—iti, for the Maoris have not, like the Hawaiians, and some others, changed the "t" into