On the Word Amama.
Lenormant[1] says: “All the hymns of the third book finish by the Accadian word Kakama, which is translated in Assyrian by ‘amen,’ ‘amanu.’”
The prayers of the Hawaiian priests, offered in the temples (heiau) as well as those offered at private sacred places or in family worship, invariably closed with the ejaculation amama, equivalent to Amen. In Hawaiian amama, as a verb, means “to offer in sacrifice.” This word does not occur in any of the other Polynesian dialects that I am acquainted with. It is found then alone as a sacerdotal expression that may have become obsolete or superseded in the other dialects. It has no etymon or material foundation within the Polynesian language, and I therefore consider it to be a foreign word imported into the language in far remote times and from a people of superior culture, with whom the Polynesians at one time were conterminous or, in some now unknown way, were connected. That people I believe to have been the old Accadian Cushites. Fr. Lenormant, in his “La langue primitive de la Chaldee” (Paris, 1875) pp. 126 and 271, gives the Accadian kakama as a participle of the verb kaka, “confirmer une parole,” and substantially “confirmation,” “confirme.” As a foreign word kakama was subject to more or less corruption when passing into the Polynesian language, and those acquainted with the facility and frequency with which gutturals are elided in the Hawaiian, Samoan and some other branches of Polynesian, would easily recognize the Accadian kakama in the Hawaiian amama. To the Accadians kakama was a regular participle of the verb kaka, meaning “it is confirmed,” and as such was employed at the close of a prayer or hymn. To the Polynesian (Hawaiian) it was a formula, an ejaculation, employed on similar occasions in imitation of his teachers, but without any inherent sense derived from his own language, as multitudes of Christians today use the word amen without knowing its origin or sense. That the Hawaiians employed amama as a verb, “to offer in sacrifice,” I look upon as a later adaption when the primary sense of the word, if ever known, had been forgotten. [[341]]
[1] “Chaldean Magic, its Origin and Development, by Fr. Lenormant,” London, Bagslor & Sons, p. 13. [↑]