REVISED 7 Apr 2010 An etymology for Galiyao Gary Holton University of Alaska Fairbanks Over the years several attempts have been made to identify the place referred to in historical documents as “Galiyao” and to attribute a plausible etymology to that term. The name Galiyao itself has a long history. It appears already in the 14th century Nāgara-Kěrtāgama among a list of Majapahit dependencies, and by the 16th century it is located on a map as Galiau. A century later the name appears again as Gallejau in a letter written by the commander of the Dutch siege of the Portuguese position in Solor (Tiele 1886, quoted in van Fraassen 1976). 1 Over the ensuing centuries the name fades from the written record, but Le Roux (1929) nonetheless convincingly identifies Galiyao with the island presently known as Pantar, located between Alor and Lembata at approximately 8 degrees south latitude and 124 degrees east longitude in Nusa Tenggara Timur. Any remaining doubt is put to rest by Barnes (1982), who carefully distinguishes Pantar from Lembata. This is a crucial point, for a key piece of evidence locating Galiyao is Pigafetta’s 1522 map of three large islands labelled Zolot, Galiau, and Mallua. The latter is well established as a reference to Alor (Vatter 1932), while the former is clearly Solor, preserving what is likely a more correct or original final consonant (compare the language name Lamaholot). But as Barnes points out, there are two large islands between Solor and Alor, namely Lembata and Pantar. Barnes’ insight is to notice that owing to the oblique trend of the narrow strait separating Lembata and Pantar, it would be difficult to recognize the two as distinct islands as viewed from the north coast. However, while the geographical location of Galiyao has been established beyond doubt, the ultimate etymological source of the word has remained something of a mystery. Le Roux (1929) identified the region of Kayang on west coast of Pantar as the source of the name Galiyao, apparently relying on the sound correspondence between the initial velar stops and the medial glide. This etymology is suspect on phonological grounds for at least two reasons. First, it fails to account for the presence of the lateral consonant in Galiyao. Second, it equates a consonantal glide in syllable onset position with a medial glide, the latter of which could just as well be interpreted as the phonetic representation of the transition between two neighbouring vowels. Beyond these simple issues of sound correspondence, it is not clear how a term referring to this particular region would come to denote the entire island Pantar. As far as I am aware, the first attempt at a morphological analysis of Galiyao is found in Rodemeier (2006:246), who transcribes Galiyao as two words, gali au. Rodemeier notes that none of her consultants in Tanjung Muna on the northern tip of Pantar could explain the meaning of the word gali. In other words, the residents of Tanjung Muna are aware that the term Galiyao is actually decomposable into two distinct meaningful parts, but the meanings of the individual parts are obscure to them. This is a significant point which merits further examination, but before continuing it is useful to take a brief excursion into the linguistic geography of Pantar Island. 1 Incidentally, this event, which inspired a simultaneous indigenous uprising against the Portuguese, is still celebrated in Western Pantar oral histories.