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Polynesia (from the Greek words meaning "many islands") is a large grouping of over one thousand islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. Polynesia may be described as the islands within a triangle with its corners at Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, and Easter Island. A Polynesian island group outside of this great triangle is Tuvalu. There are small Polynesian enclaves in the Solomon Islands and in Vanuatu.
Source: New World Encyclopedia
In English, "Hawaii" refers to the U.S. state, and "Hawaiʻi refers to the largest island within the state.
In the Hawaiian language, the spelling of the state is "Hawaiʻi," a spelling that should be used to honor Native Hawaiians.
The spelling which lacks the ʻokina (the symbol that looks a bit like an apostrophe but represents a glottal phoneme) is codified as the official spelling because of the Hawaiian Statehood Act of 1959.
Do you see the difference between the apostrophe and the ʻokina? For comparison, check out the three spellings of Hawaiʻi in this box's title. The second has an apostrophe, the third has an ʻokina!
Source: Writeinclusion.org
2021 map showing the Polynesian Triangle and some of its islands.
Based on Wikipedia content that has been reviewed, edited, and republished. Original image by Oceania_ISO_3166-1.svg: User:Tintazul. Uploaded by Mary Walker, published on 19 March 2021. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon a work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included.
These are the islands in the Polynesian region of Oceania. Links go to each area's official government website.
Unincorporated and unorganized territory of the United States
State in free association with New Zealand
Province and special territory of Chile
Overseas country of France
U.S. state
Sovereign state
State om free association with New Zealand
External territory of Australia
British Overseas Territory
Fijian dependency
Sovereign state
Non-self governing territory of New Zealand
Sovereign state
Sovereign state
Overseas collectivity of France
This guide has elements and structured content borrowed from the following guides and resources from colleagues at WPI and at other universities and libraries.
