Kolff says, “The Malay language is the lingua franca of the entire Indian Archipelago, but it is only generally understood in those places which enjoy some commerce. The natives who reside in the mountains, and those who have no communication with strangers, speak only a dialect of their own.”[1]
The Malay word ma means mother. Compare the Hawaiian mama, to chew the food for the purpose of feeding children, and the Hawaiian u-ma, now only used in the duplicate form uma-uma, the breast of a female. U itself means breast, what protrudes; hence also ama, satisfied with food. Latin, ma-ma, the breast and mother.
The Malay ma is probably the oldest form, if not the original meaning, which is better expressed perhaps in the Latin ma-ma, primarily breast, then mother; also in the Hawaiian u-ma, now obsolete in the simple form, but also meaning the female breast,—a compound word of which u alone means the breast, what protruded, and ma, which does not occur in the Hawaiian language in that sense, but whose duplicated form ma-ma means to chew anything with intention of spitting it out again, as awa, and as children were fed. A-ma means satisfied with food. Hebrew, Am, mother; Greek, Amona?
The Hawaiian mamo, descendants, posterity, grandchildren, etc., derives from the same root. But while the Malay ma and Java mbo signify “mother,” the composites of these words signify “father” in five-sixths of the Malay or pre-Malay dialects, while nine-tenths of the same dialects employ the word hina or ina and its combinations to express the idea of “mother.” The Hawaiian-Polynesian matua, parent, I consider a composite word from the primal ma and the word tua, which in the Sulu dialects signifies “husband,” whatever may have been its original meaning. In the Hawaiian this word occurs only in composite forms as an epithet of relationship, as kua-ana the older of two children of the same sex. Kai-ku-nane, “the brother of a sister,” ku probably contracted from kua. Kai-ku-wahine, “the sister of a brother.” The Amboyna and Ceram word for woman “mahina” recurs also in the Hawaiian kai-ka-mahine, “a female descendant, a daughter.” Kai is a generic term of relationship, ka is the article “the” incorporated with the word “mahine” which is but another form of “wa-hine.” [[343]]
The mysterious syllable om, which Manu taught upheld the universe, is shown by Colebrooke to mean “water,” which was worshiped by the Brahmins as the “immortal fluid,” “the mother of worlds,” etc. The word recurs in the Egyptian Omphis, a name for Osiris. It is probably also to be found in the Polynesian-Hawaiian amama, equivalent to amen as the end of a prayer, from ama, to offer to the gods; it also means a sacrifice.
STORY OF HIIAKAIKAPOLIOPELE.[2]
Hopoe and Haena were two women playing hula in the water off Nanahuki, in Puna.
Keowahimakaakaua was a brother of Pele.
In Puupahoehoe, in Kapaahu, in Puna, there is a mawae or rent where Pele slept.