The Bullroarer Atlas

POLY2026-004 - ethnographic attestation

Aitutaki

Cook Islands - Aitutaki - Oceania - Polynesia

Play / practical

Buck's construction diagram of the Aitutaki leaflet bull-roarer, patangitangi, showing the curved leaflet strip lashed at both ends and swung...
Buck's construction diagram of the Aitutaki leaflet bull-roarer, patangitangi, showing the curved leaflet strip lashed at both ends and swung on its cord — the exact instrument and local name documented here. Te Rangi Hiroa (Peter Buck), The Material Culture of the Cook Islands (Aitutaki) (1927), fig. 281 Public domain Image source

patangitangi English

Source term: leaflet bull-roarer

patangitangi (Cook Islands Maori): "bullroarer, a child's toy," from pa- + tangi ("to sound, cry"), reduplicated; made from a coconut leaflet.

Etymology. Transparent sound-word formation for an Aitutaki coconut-leaflet toy bullroarer. (high confidence)

On Aitutaki the bull-roarer was a children's plaything made from a strip of coconut leaflet rather than carved wood, and whirled for its hum. The Cook Islands dictionary records it plainly as "Bullroarer. (child's toy)," with the sample phrase "there is a coconut leaf to make a bullroarer out of." Te Rangi Hīroa (Peter Buck) catalogued the leaf toys of Aitutaki in his 1927 material-culture volume, and when he later turned to Samoa he noted that the local version was "made in the same way as at Aitutaki" — there it was the lango mumu, taking its name from the buzzing fly because of its humming noise, made alongside a leaf windmill (pe'ape'a) and a spinner (moamoa).

Toys made of coconut leaflets were made in the same way as at Aitutaki (39, pp. 318-322). These included the windmill (pe'ape'a), spinner (moamoa), and bull roarer (lango mumu). The bull roarer from its humming noise takes the name of the buzzing fly.

Te Rangi Hiroa (P. H. Buck), Samoan Material Culture, Bishop Museum Bulletin 75, 1930:552
Object
Buck's Aitutaki volume page-locks patangitangi as a bull-roarer made from a coconut leaflet strip and leaflet midrib; he also argues the perishable coconut-leaflet form belongs under the generic bull-roarer name.
Function
Coconut-leaflet toy/secular bullroarer from Aitutaki; included because Buck explicitly calls it a bull-roarer and defends the generic classification.
Map confidence
medium - Aitutaki island anchor; Buck's discussion is island-level and not a specific village or findspot.
Source location
pp. 321-322 and p. 345; Google Books page IDs PA321, PA322, PA345

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