EA-TW-AMIS-001 - ethnographic attestation
Amis bnbn toy and bird-scarer bullroarer
Taiwan - Ciwidiyan - Shuilian, Shoufeng Township, Hualien - East Asia
Play / practical
bnbn English
Source term: Bnbn (bullroarer)
bnbn — Amis name for the bullroarer, apparently onomatopoeic
Etymology. Cheng treats the Amis form as onomatopoeic. (medium confidence)
Among the Amis of eastern Taiwan the bullroarer is called bnbn, a name the ethnomusicologist Lancini Jen-hao Cheng records as apparently onomatopoeic. At Ciwidiyan — Shuilian village on the Hualien coast — it was a childhood toy and a crop-guard, swung to scare birds off the ripening fields. When Cheng visited, the sub-tribe's chieftain De-rang Sung, a primary-school teacher, was making bnbn with his pupils so the plaything would pass down: bamboo sawn and shaved to a slender oval, a hole drilled at the top, a cotton string tied through.
The bullroarer is also a previously undocumented instrument and bnbn, is the indigenous name given to it in Amis society, a term that seems to be onomatopoeic. The bnbn functioned as a toy or to scare birds in order to help protect arable crops.
Cheng, "Native Terminology and Classification of Taiwanese Musical Instruments," Ensayos 19(28), 2015, sec. 1.13
- Object
- Cheng identifies bnbn as the Amis indigenous name for a bullroarer and says the term appears onomatopoeic. The IEAS museum specimen is a slender oval bamboo slice, c. 17.5 x 2.5 cm, with one terminal hole and cotton string.
- Function
- Children's toy or bird-scarer used to protect arable crops.
- Map confidence
- medium - Shuilian village (Ciwidiyan), Shoufeng, Hualien — the sub-tribe named in Cheng's thesis; refined 2026-07-18 from the earlier regional anchor.
- Source location
Page references
section 1.13, printed p. 78; conclusion | thesis §6.1.13, printed pp. 340-343
- Toy / secular survival