Hawaiki

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A mythical ancestral homeland believed to be the origin of the Polynesian peoples
2. A spiritual and cultural concept representing a place of origin for many Pacific Islanders
3. A significant location in Polynesian mythology, often associated with the afterlife and ancestral gods

Etymology: Hawaiki is a name for the ancestral homeland that Māori traditions describe as the origin of their ancestors, and through them of the wider Polynesian peoples. The name is one of several in the region that share a common root: in the reconstructed ancestor of the Polynesian languages, the form was something like "Sawaiki," and the same sound pattern survives in the name of the island group Hawaii and in Savai'i, the largest island of Samoa. Speakers who settled these islands carried the name with them, so a single homeland-name ended up attached to places across thousands of kilometres of ocean. English took the word directly from Māori, where "Hawaiki" is the traditional name of the place from which canoes sailed. Because the homeland is mythical, the word does not point to one real location; it names a source that different tribes placed in different islands, which is why the same name appears in more than one place.

Synonyms: Hawaiki