This difficulty was not overcome when the Polynesian dialects were reduced to writing by the many missionaries to the different parts of the Pacific Ocean. It was impossible to adopt a uniform method. In some places “h” was used, in others “f” and “l” or “r” or “k,” as in the Hawaiian word “aloha”—which in other island groups was “alofa” and “aloofa,” “aroha,” “kaoha,” “akaaroa,” all meaning “friendship.”
In attempting to trace the place of origin of the Hawaiians and other Polynesians it is absolutely necessary to take into account this phonetic difficulty.
Fornander gives the following list of island groups with the various methods of using the word Hawaii:
- Hawaii—Hawa-i-i.
- Tahiti—Hawa-i-i.
- Samoa—Sawa-i-i or Sava-i-i.
- New Zealand—Hawa-iki.
- Marquesas—Hawa-iki.
- Raro Tonga—Awa-iki.
- Tonga—Haba-i.
Hawaii in some form of the word is the most universally used name among all the Polynesians as the place for their ancestral home.
The name of the Hawaiian Islands is taken from this mythological name. So also is the Savaii of the Samoan Islands. So also the small island [[43]]Hawaiki in Lake Rotorua of New Zealand, where the New Zealand legends say the ancestors of the Maoris placed the relics which they brought with them from their ancestral Hawaiki when they settled in New Zealand. In far eastern Tahiti is a place on Raiatea, the island now known as Opoa. Its ancient and sacred name was Hawaii.
Some writers have thought that Samoa might be the center of dispersion to the other Pacific islands, but the Samoan dialect is very corrupt, its legends are fragmentary, and its history of sea rovers seems to lack a sufficient similarity of names with the migrators from the original home to allow this supposition to have very great weight.
It is also interesting to note that the Hawaiian Islands do not have a good foundation for any claim to be the original centre of dispersion, although many of the most ancient legends of Hawaii and of New Zealand are the same. There is abundance of proof of a common origin, but not sufficient to found any claim for Hawaiian parentage.
Ellis, writing in 1830 concerning the Tahitians and inhabitants of neighbouring islands, says:
“A tradition stated that the first inhabitants of these islands originally came from a country in the direction of the setting sun, to which several names were given. Pigs and dogs were brought from the West.”