Question to Polynesian expert

[Ross Clark]

> Date sent:      Thu, 21 Jan 1999 18:55:17 +0100
> Send reply to:  mahdi at FHI-Berlin.MPG.DE
> From:           Waruno Mahdi <mahdi at FHI-Berlin.MPG.DE>
> To:             " AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS" <AN-LANG at anu.edu.au>
> Subject:        Re: Question to Polynesian expert
> Originally to:  AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS <AN-LANG at anu.edu.au>

> > > No it doesn't. The word first appears in English in Cook's voyages,
> > > in descriptions of Tahiti and other Polynesian societies. Cook spells
> > > it "tattow"; Bougainville a few years earlier had spelled it "tataou"
> > > (in French). Both of these are clearly attempts to represent the
> > > Polynesian /tatau/. If there is a puzzle here, it is why the final
> > > syllable changed from /taw/ to /tu:/ in English.
>
> I agree that the evidence quite clearly points to a Polynesian origin.
> As for the puzzling secondary shift in the rhyme, is there any data
> on when it took place?

Almost immediately, it would seem. OED has the -oo spelling from as
early as 1774 in the diary of Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay). After
1800 the -ow spelling pretty much disappears.

>It would be interesting of course, if influence
> of Old Javanese _tatu_ had played a role, but I am somewhat skeptical.
>
> Firstly, the O.Jav. word has a different meaning (wound, scar) which,
> although somehow connected, nevertheless does not make it a more
> convincing source of motivation for the shift, than say _tattoo_ "military
> parade" (the tattoos of Polynesian warriors giving them a particular
> martial appearance).
> Secondly, I am not aware of O.Jav. _tatu_ having been borrowed into Dutch
> or having even become a feature of the Indo-Dutch vernacular, in which the
> main source of local lexical items was Bazaar Malay, or of any Pidgin Dutch
> of Indonesia (e.g. Petjoh).
>
> O.Jav. _tatu_ can in any case not be cognate with the Polynesian _tatau_.
> Has it been derived by anyone from a higher order protoform? Could it
> be a derivation from PAN *Ca[?]u "person"?

Paul Geraghty (1983) connects the Polynesian word with Fijian _sau_
"tattoo, pierce, break, knock" and Rotuman _jau_ "beat, hit", giving
Proto Central Pacific *ja(R)u "strike, beat". That's the only
reconstruction beyond Polynesian that I know of. The connection with
hitting is from the technique used, tapping the tattooing implement
with a stick to break the skin. In Polynesian _tatau_ is usually a
noun, and the verb used is the "hit-with-a-stick" verb _taa_, with
_tatau_ as its object.

Ross Clark