Peter Maurice McCallum
Abstract
Popularisers and scholars almost unanimously present a standard view of the origins of the name Papua. Many scholars associate other forms of the name with the now standard Papua: puwa-puwa, and even papu-papu. The name is either standard Malay, or else Moluccan dialect and it means ‘frizzy-haired'. While this is clearly the view of westerners in the 19 th and 20 th centuries, evidence for it in the 18 th, 17 th and 16 th centuries is lacking or highly doubtful, and the name is older than that. Following the Dutch officials J.H.F. Sollewijn Gelpke and F.C. Kamma, the writer of this article explores the likelihood of the word Papua having first been a Biak term for the far West of New Guinea, a dialectal place name, this by at least the 14 th century. It first referred to the Raja Ampat Islands , between the New Guinea mainland and the Moluccas ( Halmahera ). In European times the term extended its area of coverage. Only in later centuries did it pick up denotations of the more characteristic populations of the Far East of Indonesia and shifting connotations, whether derogatory or complimentary.
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