Palagi - Use, Meaning and Origin of Term

Use, Meaning and Origin of Term

The etymology of the term Palagi is disputed. An explanation that emerged in the 19th century is that word is derived from the Polynesian rootwords "pa" (meaning: gates) and "lagi" (meaning: sky or heaven), hence the standard translation "gates of heaven" It has been suggested that the compound word comes from the Polynesian's reaction to seeing for the first time, European missionaries enter the country. Skin being a different color made them think they were men sent from the gates of heaven Tcherkézoff (1999) argues that such an interpretation is a European projection to explain Polynesian cosmology.

The explanation of Niuean word "Palagi", is that "pa" means bang such as that of a gun and "lagi" means sky, literally means bangs into the sky. In "Papa-lagi" "papa" means more than one bang or many bangs, and "lagi" means sky. In the olden days, Europeans who landed on Niue carried guns and often fired the guns into the sky, when landed on the reef, to scare away potential trouble-making natives.

Jan Tent, a Macquarie University linguist, and Dr. Paul Geraghty, Director of the Institute of Fijian Language and Culture in Suva, suggest that the word may have its origins in the travels of the Polynesians themselves. They believe that the Polynesian islanders may have encountered Malay travellers prior to contact with Europeans, and adopted the Malay word "barang" (meaning: imported cloth). These researchers also suggest another possible etymology - the Malay word for European, as used in the 17th and 18th centuries, was 'faranggi'. However, they discount this possibility as the word palangi seems to have originally referred to cloth; only later was the word transferred to the people.