Alor Island

This paper investigates the influence of Abui plant names on Alor Island's toponyms. Abui is a Papuan language spoken in Alor Island (Alor-Pantar Archipelago, SouthEast Indonesia, Timor area). Although there are rich studies on the Abui culture and language, research on how botany, an important toponymic source, shapes toponymic patterns in Alor Island remains scant. Using Field Linguistics and Language Documentation methods, the authors and a local consultant have detailed the names of ten common Abui horticultural andagricultural plants before matching them with toponyms in Alor Island to reconstruct their etymologies. Results show that toponyms in Alor Island derived from phytonyms are mostly transparent, named after plants in the area with the top toponymic sources being mea 'mango', wata 'coconut', and kanaai 'canarium'. Oral stories are highly connected with the place naming process and are frequently used to explain how places received their names. This paper would like to provide evidences and analyses as a starting point for further research on the links between Botany and Toponymy in Alor Island.

Key words: Toponymy, Phytonyms, Language Documentation, Abui Language, Alor Island

Have you ever wondered how cultural identity is constructed among various groups of people? How do people living pre-literate and indigenous societies, with the absence of an established writing system, note their history, ideas, traditions, and rituals – crucial aspects of any culture? In fact, they rely heavily on oral culture. These traditional stories are passed from one generation to another and create a sense of identity and belonging! This is a trend we will see in our story on the Abui people. You might be thinking, who are these Abui people and what does the word Abui even mean? The word Abui, in the Abui language, means ‘mountain’ or ‘enclosed space’. In Bahasa Malay, Abui also refers to the Abui speakers who define their language as Abui tangà, ‘mountain language’, and call themselves Abui lokù, ‘mountain people’. This ‘mountain language’, or Abui, is a Papuan language spoken in Alor Island (Alor-Pantar Archipelago, South-East Indonesia, Timor area) by about 17,000 speakers. NTU has had a longstanding history of conducting research on the Abui people and language. Early work in NTU’s Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies (LMS) was done by Assistant Professor Frantisek Kratochvíl. Frantisek’s Doctoral Thesis published in 2007, A Grammar of Abui, is widely regarded as the first comprehensive work on Abui phonology, morphology, and syntax – areas relating to the structure and “look” of the Abui language. Frantisek has conducted fieldwork in Alor Island since the 2000s, resulting in the publication of an Abui storybook and dictionary – valuable tools in protecting and passing down this language – especially when the teaching of the Abui language is banned in schools in Alor Island. Current research done by Dr Francesco Perono Cacciafoco, together with Associate Professor Francesco Cavallaro, focuses on the Abui people. In particular, they study Abui oral traditions which shape cultural identity. Abui myths and legends, known as tira, focus on historical events and answer questions like: where did the Abui people come from, what does it mean to be Abui, where do places get their names from, among others. Such questions are vital for a culture to trace its beginnings and thereafter, commemorate how far it has come as a “civilisation”. Abui oral traditions detail how the Abui people settled in Alor in ancient times. Some people later moved to the Kabola territory in Alor Island, where they lived in caves in the mountains of Mainàng, giving rise to their identity as mountain people. Oral traditions are also highly intertwined with Abui toponyms, or place names. The Abui people use stories to explain the names of certain places. These narrative genres also prove the lasting connection between the Abui people and their physical surroundings rocks, caves, water bodies, places, and coastal areas – as the Abui people name their physical environment according to events they believed took place at these locations!

The wider genealogical affiliations of the Timor-Alor-Pantar languages have been the subject of much speculation. These languages are surrounded by unrelated Austronesian languages, and attempts to locate related languages have focused on Papuan languages 800 km or more distant. In this paper we examine three hypotheses for genealogical relatedness, drawing on both pronominal and especially lexical evidence. We rely in particular on recent reconstructions of proto-Alor-Pantar vocabulary. Of the hypotheses evaluated here, we find the most striking similarities between TAP and the West Bomberai family. However, we conclude that the evidence currently available is insufficient to confirm a genealogical relationship with West Bomberai or any other family, and hence, TAP must be considered a family-level isolate.

Abui is a Papuan language spoken in Alor Island, South-East Indonesia. Although there are rich studies on the Abui language and its structure, research on Abui toponymy, which aids the understanding of language, culture, and society, deserves greater attention. This paper analyzes features of Abui society through Abui toponyms collected using Field Linguistics and Language Documentation methods. It finds that, because place names communicate valuable information on peoples and territories, Abui toponyms reflect the agrarian lifestyle of Abui speakers and, more broadly, the close relationship that the people have with their landscape. Furthermore, Abui toponyms express positive traits in the Abui culture like kinship ties and bravery. Notwithstanding, like other pre-literate and indigenous societies, oral stories are commonly used to explain how places are named. This paper augments the existing Abui toponymic studies on the connection between names and the places they name and provides a deeper understanding of the Abui language, culture, and society.