The Bullroarer Atlas

No. POLY2026-013

Fatu Hiva pinao, the dragonfly

French Polynesia (France) · Fatu Hiva, Marquesas Islands · Oceania

Play / practical

Buck’s construction diagram of the Aitutaki coconut-leaflet patangitangi: a curved leaflet loop above a flat strip, an enlarged tied attachment and the assembled instrument on its cord, labelled A–D.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. A coconut-leaflet roarer of the same kind, from Aitutaki in the Cook Islands. Public domain · Image source

pinao

Source term: leaf whizzer

pinao (Marquesan, pinaʔo): "dragonfly"; the name of the leaf whizzer. Cognates: Hawaiian pinao, Tahitian piʻao (Proto-Central-Eastern Polynesian *piiŋao).

On Fatu Hiva, the southernmost of the inhabited Marquesas, children made a whizzer from a strip of coconut or banana leaf on a coconut midrib and swung it through the air to make it whizz. They called it pinao, the Marquesan word for the dragonfly. The same insect name runs across eastern Polynesia: pinao in Hawaiʻi, piʻao in Tahiti. To the south-west, in the Tuamotus, the leaf roarer was named for the dragonfly as well, though with a different word.

Particulars

Object
A strip of coconut or banana leaf on a coconut midrib.
Function
A children's toy, swung to make a whizzing noise.

Source

New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed., 2001), vol. 20, "Polynesia"

View the source

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.