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Introduction: Pakilangi -- a mystery name for a mystery tree
*Pakilangi - Intsia bijuga
How people and plant names first travelled from Taiwan to Polynesia
The origin of the language carried to East Polynesia
The counterpart to *Pakilangi in Aotearoa
This is something of a mystery tree whose identity has been forgotten in several places, but the Luangiua tree recorded as Paelangi, a tree used for poles and canoes, by Prof Anne Salmond in the 1960s and as Pailangi by Prof Tim Bayliss-Smith a little later, has been identified as Intsia bijuga by botanist colleagues of Prof Bayliss-Smith. This is almost certainly the same tree as the Pakilani of the other "Northern Outlier" islands. Its link to Aotearoa is more tenuous, but not completely beyond the bounds of possibility. The link with Puluwat is also tenuous; this atoll is about 2,000 km northwest of Ontong Java and direct contact between the atolls would probably have been rare; the term could have been acquired by one group or the other in the course of trading, perhaps through third parties, or the similarity in sound could be simply a coincidence, despite the words having the same referent. As is often the case, more data are needed!
The doubts about the word justify a fuller description for the tropical Pailangi/Pakilani, Intsia bijuga, than the one in a passing reference to the tree in the page for Proto-Polynesian *Toa (a name that refers to a different tall tree, but is derived from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *TeRas, referring to hardwood trees in general, through Protro Oceanic *ToRa, referring especially to the Intsia). Outside Polynesia this tree is still known by names derived from *TeRas and others from an earlier Proto Malayo Polynesian word *qipil (e.g. Tagalog ipil, Ibanag ifil, Kiribati ibi, also in Polynesia Samoan ifi). The Tongan name, fehi, reflects an alternative Proto Oceanic term, *pesi, and is cognate with Bauan Fijian vesi. Owners of outdoor furniture will know it as "kwila". The fact that the word seems to have turned up at the opposite end of the Polynesian triangle with no stops in between also merits an examination of how that might have happened.
*Pakilangi - Intsia bijuga
 Intsia bijuga by whatever name is a mighty tree whose topmost branches do indeed seem to be patting the heavens, as the outlier name implies. It grows up to 40 m high, with a trunk up to 2 m in diameter. The butresses can be two metres high, and also extend that far from the base. It is a coastal plant, often associated with mangrove forests (i.e. the forests at the back of mangrove swamps). The leaves are grouped in pairs, or occasionally three in a cluster, oval or elliptic in shape, and vary from 3 x 2 cm to 18 x 12 cm in size. It has panicles of white flowers, each with a conspicuous perfect petal. The fruit is an oblong pod, 9 - 15 cm long by 4 or 5 cm wide.
The tree is native to Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the Indian Ocean islands, Melanesia, Micronesia and Samoa, but apparently an ancient introduction to Tonga. The wood has a beautiful grain, seldom cracks or warps, and is resistant to termites. In Samoa it is esteemed for house posts, tanoa (kava bowls), pounders for beating tapa, slit gongs, and in the past also for weapons and constructing ocean-going canoes. It is considered to be a sacred tree in Fiji, but has been over-exploited in many places and is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN) "Red List" as "Near Threatened". The major threats to its survival are excessive logging for timber (including outdoor furniture for export to Aotearoa) and the conversion of lowland forest ecosystems for agriculture, tourism and housing. It seems well protected in Fiji, but is declining and at risk in Vanuatu and Samoa. Mining and forest fires threaten it in Northern Australia. Elsewhere it is mostly illegal logging and poorly-regulated export provisions (often in combinaton) which are hastening its disappearance.
It seems unlikely that a word originating in the North Solomons Polynesian Outliers might be retained in Māori after it has vanished elsewhere in Polynesia. However, although they are beyond the western edge of the Polynesian triangle, the languages of several of them, including that spoken on the attol of Ontong Java (Luangiua), may according to one current hypothesis be more closely related to Māori than either are to Samoan. Professor William Wilson from the University of Hawai'i, Hilo, has for several decades being developing and refining a hypothesis placing the origin of the Eastern Polynesian languages among the Polynesian outliers of the Solomon Islands, with the languages of Luanguia (Ontong Java) and its neighbours, rather than Samoan, as their closest relatives outside Eastern Polynesia. To explain how this might be so, we need to look at the wider history of Austronesian expansion into Polynesia.
How people and plant names first travelled from Taiwan to Polynesia
The Austronesian languages were first spoken by people who were living in Southern China about 7,000 years ago, and who settled in Taiwan as the Han Chinese advanced from the north. Their language seems to have split into ten sets or subgroups, nine of which remained confined to Taiwan, and one, Malayo-Polynesian, vanished from Taiwan to become the ancestor of all Austronesian languages spoken elsewhere. The Austronesian expansion began with the migration of the Malayo-Polynesian speakers from Taiwan to the Northern Philippines about 4,000 years ago. This journey proceeded gradually through the Philippines, then branched west through the Celebes, Borneo, Sumatra and Java to the Malay Peninsula, and across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar, and east through the northern Moluccas and along the northern coastline of New Guinea, out into Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, finally reaching the last uninhabited lands on the face of the earth -- the islands and atolls of Eastern Polynesia: the Southern Cook Islands, Tahiti, the Tuamotus, the Austral Islands, Hawai'i, Mangareva, Rapa Nui, the Marquesas, and Aotearoa.
 We can trace this journey through its various stages fairly straight-forwardly for the first 2,500 years or so, until we get to Samoa. By the time the explorers had reached the Moluccas, the Malayo-Polynesian languages had split into a western and a central group. Western Malayo-Polynesian included most Philippine languages, Palauan, Chamorro, and (eventually) the languages of Malaysia, most of Indonesia, and Madagascar. Central Malayo-Polynesian developed into the language of South Halmahera (in the Moluccas) and the languages of the "bird's head" north-western tip of New Guinea, on the one hand, and the Oceanic languages as the Austronesians moved further east along the northern Northern New Guinea coast and adjacent archipelagos. In the course of these migrations Proto-Oceanic separated into western, Admiralty Islands (including Manus) and eastern branches. The eastern branch in turn separated into the languages of the Southeast Solomon Islands, several separate clusters of Vanuatu languages, those of New Caledonia, the nuclear Micronesian languages, and Proto Central Pacific, which was developed by those who had ventured west of Vanuatu towards Fiji. Proto Central Pacific in turn separated into the precursor of Eastern Fijian and Polynesian languages, the language of Rotuma, and the West Fijian dialects. Finally, when Tonga and Samoa had been reached, the Polynesian language developed separately from the East Fijian languages, which themselves came to blend in with their West Fijian neighbours.
As settlement of the adjacent island groups progressed, Proto-Polynesian speakers diverged into two branches -- Tongic, including the languages of Tonga and Niue, and Nuclear Polynesian: the common language of all the rest (for the time), from which would develop the precursors of modern Samoan, Tokelauan, the languages of the Vanuatu Outliers (Emae. Mele-Fila, Futuna-Aniwa and West Uvea), Tuvalu, East Futuna, East Uvea, and Pukpuka, along with those of the languages of the Micronesian and Solomon Islands Outliers and East Polynesia.
The origin of the language carried to East Polynesia
A group of speakers of Nuclear Polynesian (or one of the precursors of the languages developing from it, like Samoan) set out in this period for uninhabited islands off the eastern coast of the Solomon Islands and a little to the north to explore and settle; eventually some of their descendents may have ended up in East Polynesia, but whether and how how they got there has become a matter of vigorous debate among scholars. Throughout most of the twentieth century it was generally agreed that East Polynesia (Hawai'i, the Society Islands, the southern Cook Islands, the Kermadec Islands, Aotearoa, and the islands to the east of those groups) was settled by explorers from the Samoa area who by the end of the first millennium AD had settled mainly in Tahiti and nearby islands and over the next two centuries spead rapidly to the ends of the earth: Hawaii, the Marquesas, Easter Island, Aotearoa and all points in between. However, the Eastern Polynesian languages, while clearly very closely related from each other, are sufficiently different from those of Western Polynesia for it to be assumed that their source language must have taken some time to develop apart from the rest of Polynesia, although the location of the "mystery island" (or islands) where this took place could not be ascertained.
Meticulous research by Professor William Wilson of the University of Hawai'i, Hilo, over more than thirty years, has provided a plausible solution to the origin of the East Polynesian mother-language. He studied its evolution through a series of changes as the descendants of the speakers of the original Nuclear Polynesian language moved through a string of islands and attols to the west, prncipally off the coast of the Solomon Islands. According to his Solomon Outliers/East Polynesian hypothesis, at the end of this process some of those who had settled on Ontong Java and nearby attols set out for the Phoenix and Line Islands. The new East Polynesian language was formed there, and its speakers entered East Polynesia initially through the Marquesas, and then reached the Society Islands from where they quickly spread out through the entire region.
It is important to note that the Phoenix and Line Islands are not particularly hospitable places, although we do know (through deposits of stone) that they were visited from both East and West Polynesia, and East-Polynesian-style marae were built one some of them. None were inhabited when European explorers first encountered them in the eighteenth century. Most archaeological remains indicate that they were way-stations rather than long-term or continuous settlements, although one of the Line Islands, Tabuaeran (Fanning Island) does seem at one time to have been settled on a long-term basis by a substantial population of agriculturalists. Professor Wilson's research was sufficient to convince the doyen of Austronesian linguistics, the late Professor Robert Blust of the University of Hawai'i, Manoa, that the puzzle had been solved:
Finally, the immediate source community for the settlement of eastern Polynesia, long a
mystery without a solution, has now been shown convincingly to have been the northern Outliers,
that is, Kapingamarangi and Nukuoro in southern Micronesia, and Takuu, Laungiua, Nukuria,
Nukumanu, and Sikaiana, spoken on atolls east of the main Solomon chain (Wilson 1985, 2012). [Blust 2019, p. 429.]
 According to Professor Wilson's research, the Eastern Polynesian languages are ultimately descended from the original Solomons Outlier/East Polynesian language. It is thought that the speakers of this language remained in touch with each other while they were settling this string of islands, and after separate languages developed in various island groups. The modern languages to which this "proto-language" gave rise are, in the order in which they separated from the rest: (1) Tikopian, Rennellese, Anuta, Vaekau-Taumako; (2) Nukuoro, Kapingamarangi; (3) Sikayana; (4) Takuu, Luangiua. Luangiua is the language spoken on Ontong Java attol, and it is from here and neighbouring islands that the ancestors of the East Polynesians are thought to have migrated, probably settling initially on some of the Phoenix and Line Islands.
Professor Wilson considers that before they entered East Polynesia proper, two dialects had developed in the new language which the migrants were now speaking: a "distal" one -- furthest from its original source -- which became the basis of Marquesan, Mangarevan and Rapanui, and a "proximal" one -- closest to the point of origin -- with a "northern" variant which became the basis for Hawaiian and a "southern" variant from which all the other East Polynesian languages developed. To start with however they were essentially one language and the speakers remained in touch with each other through regular voyaging for a prolonged period. Contact with West Polynesia and the Outliers was also made and maintained.
It is important to note that not all linguists and archaeologists accept Professor Wilson's hypothesis of a South Solomons origin for the East Polynesian languages, or that the Marquesas were the first point of entry for the colonization of East Polynesia. Some regard direct migration from West Polynesia as more likely, and the Southern Cooks or some other island group as a likely incubation area. It is also possible that the drought which hit the Western Pacific towards the end of the first millenium AD precipitated a migration from both the Solomon Outliers and West Polynesia eastwards, with both groups of refugees converging (on the Line Islands or elsewhere) and developing the new language. As usual, more research is required to clarify this still rather hazy picture. However, as things stand, it is certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility that the South Island pakilaki/pakilangi might indeed be cognate with the Luangiua pailangi. What is beyond dispute is that the East Polynesian pioneers were extraordinarily skilful and accomplished voyagers who discovered and organized the settlement of the last unexplored areas of the earth habitable by people.
The origins and relationships of East Polynesian languages will be further discussed in a Friends' Newsletter ā te wā. Meanwhile, for further reading, these resources are noted in the Bibliography -- (a) under the "Linguistic History" heading: Blust 2019; Dalvetshin 2023; Geraghty 2009; Wilson 1985, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021, 2022; and (b) under the "Human Settlement" heading: Allen 2014; Allen et al. 2016; Anderson et al. 2000; Anderson et al. 2019; Allen et al. 2022; Carson 1998; Di Piazzi and Pearthree 2001a, 2001b; Hunt 2006; Hudjashov et al. 2018; Ionnadis et al. 2021; Sear et al. 2020; Sheppard 2022; Walter and Sheppard 1996. I have discussed these topics with some of those authors and other scholars familiar with this area of research, and I am very grateful for their advice and assistance. Any errors of fact or interpretation remain my sole responsibility. RB
The counterpart to *Pakilangi in Aotearoa
Unless some nineteenth-century manuscript is discovered with the source of the entry for "Pakiraki" in the Williams' Dictionary and the identity of its referent revealed, the counterpart for its Outlier namesakes will remain ... unexplained! The most likely candidates are the magnificent beech trees which dominate the southern forests, the tawai or tawhai, members of the Nothofagaceae. One of them, Fuscospora truncata, is pictured in the gallery. This tree grows to 30 metres or more high, with a buttressed trunk up to 2 m. wide. Linking these trees to *Pakilangi is pure conjecture, but their other name does itself have a connection with at least one of the Solomons outliers ....
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