{"id":"POLY2026-008","label":"Whanganui (huhū, the buzzing toy)","people_or_site":"Whanganui Maori (Te Ati Haunui-a-Paparangi and neighbours)","country_current":"New Zealand","historic_region":"Whanganui River district, west-central North Island","macroregion":"Oceania / New Zealand","local_name":"huhū","source_term":"huhu, the bull-roarer, a toy","source_language":"English/Maori","object_description":"Not described; only the name huhū is recorded.","function_summary":"A toy, explicitly so. The name is onomatopoeic — huhū is the Maori verb 'to hiss, whiz, buzz, whirr, hum'. District: Whanganui.","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"jps1926_wordlist","source_type":"primary_ethnography","source_url":"http://web.archive.org/web/20180214064540id_/http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document//Volume_35_1926/Volume_35%2C_No._139/Word_list._Containing_words_or_meanings_not_included_in_published_dictionaries_of_the_Maori_tongue%2C_p_242-247/p1","page_or_plate":"printed p. 244 (JPS viewer prints its own page breaks; the entry falls between the \"- 244\" and \"- 245\" marks)","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot","coordinate_basis":"Whanganui River district, between the river mouth and the middle reaches; the word-list tag is a district, not a settlement","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"On the Whanganui River the bull-roarer was huhū, and the name is simply the sound: huhū is the ordinary Maori verb for hissing, whizzing, whirring and humming, and the same word names the humming top. On the Whanganui it was, plainly, a toy. Among Ngati Porou of the East Cape the same instrument under the same name was no plaything at all: there it belonged to a rain rite, and children were scolded for sounding it, because to sound it would bring on a storm. Two hundred miles apart, one instrument was a weather-maker and a game.","pull_quote":"huhu, the bull-roarer, a toy. An example of onomatopeia. Whanganui.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"\"Word list. Containing words or meanings not included in published dictionaries of the Maori tongue,\" Journal of the Polynesian Society 35, no. 139 (1926), p. 244.","term_gloss":"huhū: Whanganui name for the bullroarer, from the Maori verb huhū 'to hiss, whiz, buzz, whirr, hum'. Distinct from short-u huhu, the huhu grub (Prionoplus reticularis) — a homophone across a vowel-length boundary, not the source of the name.","cls":"play_practical","class_label":"Play / practical","color":"#24766D","is_candidate":false,"flags":["toy_survival"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Elsdon Best (comp.), 'Word list: containing words or meanings not included in published dictionaries of the Maori tongue,' Journal of the Polynesian Society 35(139) (1926): 242-247, at p. 244","url":"http://web.archive.org/web/20180214064540id_/http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document//Volume_35_1926/Volume_35%2C_No._139/Word_list._Containing_words_or_meanings_not_included_in_published_dictionaries_of_the_Maori_tongue%2C_p_242-247/p1"}],"source_citations":"Elsdon Best (comp.), 'Word list: containing words or meanings not included in published dictionaries of the Maori tongue,' Journal of the Polynesian Society 35(139) (1926): 242-247, at p. 244","source_display":"Elsdon Best (comp.), 'Word list: containing words or meanings not included in published dictionaries of the Maori tongue,' Journal of the Polynesian Society 35(139) (1926): 242-247, at p. 244","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Not described; only the name huhū is recorded.","function_display":"A toy, explicitly so. The name is onomatopoeic — huhū is the Maori verb 'to hiss, whiz, buzz, whirr, hum'. District: Whanganui.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"whanganui maori","display_name":"Whanganui (huhū, the buzzing toy)","image":{"full":"assets/objects/POLY2026-008_poly2026-008-maori-prm1901-64-7.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/POLY2026-008_poly2026-008-maori-prm1901-64-7_thumb.jpg","alt":"A Māori pūrerehua in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, with a broad pale wooden blade and cord wrapped around its narrow end.","credit":"Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 1901.64.7","license":"Pitt Rivers Museum Collections Online terms: non-commercial educational/community use with credit","source_page":"https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-39777","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Māori pūrerehua in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford."},"slug":"poly2026-008-whanganui-maori-te-ati-haunui-a-paparangi-and-neighbours"}