POLY2026-008 - ethnographic attestation
Whanganui Maori (Te Ati Haunui-a-Paparangi and neighbours)
New Zealand - Whanganui River district, west-central North Island - Oceania
Play / practical
huhū English/Maori
Source term: huhu, the bull-roarer, a toy
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.
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. A 1926 list of Maori words the dictionaries had missed gives the whole of what is known: "huhu, the bull-roarer, a toy. An example of onomatopeia. Whanganui." The interest sits on that one word, *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.
huhu, the bull-roarer, a toy. An example of onomatopeia. Whanganui.
"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.
- Object
- Not described; only the name huhū is recorded.
- Function
- A toy, explicitly so. The name is onomatopoeic — huhū is the Maori verb 'to hiss, whiz, buzz, whirr, hum'. District: Whanganui.
- Map confidence
- medium - Whanganui River district, between the river mouth and the middle reaches; the word-list tag is a district, not a settlement
- Source location
Page references
printed p. 244 (JPS viewer prints its own page breaks; the entry falls between the "- 244" and "- 245" marks)
- Toy / secular survival