Rongorongo - Etymology and Variant Names

Etymology and Variant Names

Rongorongo is the modern name for the inscriptions. In the Rapanui language it means "to recite, to declaim, to chant out".

The original name—or perhaps description—of the script is said to have been kohau motu mo rongorongo, "lines incised for chanting out", shortened to kohau rongorongo or "lines chanting out". There are also said to have been more specific names for the texts based on their topic. For example, the kohau ta‘u ("lines of years") were annals, the kohau îka ("lines of fishes") were lists of persons killed in war (îka "fish" was homophonous with or used figuratively for "war casualty"), and the kohau ranga "lines of fugitives" were lists of war refugees.

Some authors have understood the ta‘u in kohau ta‘u to refer to a separate form of writing distinct from rongorongo. Barthel recorded that, "The Islanders had another writing (the so-called 'ta‘u script') which recorded their annals and other secular matters, but this has disappeared." However, Fischer writes that "the ta‘u was originally a type of rongorongo inscription. In the 1880s, a group of elders invented a derivative 'script' called ta‘u with which to decorate carvings in order to increase their trading value. It is a primitive imitation of rongorongo." An alleged third script, the mama or va‘eva‘e described in some mid-twentieth-century publications, was "an early twentieth-century geometric invention".