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tattoo [tattoo 词源字典]: tattoo: English has two words tattoo. The older, ‘military display’ [17], was borrowed from a Dutch word, taptoe, that means literally ‘tap to’, that is, ‘shut the tap’ – a signal to shut off the taps of the beer barrels at closing time in the taverns. By the time it reached English it was being used for a ‘drum beat signalling the time for soldiers to return to their quarters at night’, and in the 18th century it was applied to a ‘military display based on this’. The tattoo on the skin [18] was borrowed from a Polynesian language, such as Tahitian (tatau) or Marquesan (ta-tu).
=> tap[tattoo etymology, tattoo origin, 英语词源]
Easter Island: so called because it was discovered by Dutch navigator Jakob Roggeveen on April 2, 1722, which was Easter Monday. It earlier had been visited by English pirate Edward Davis (1695), but he neglected to name it. The native Polynesian name is Mata-kite-ran "Eyes that Watch the Stars."
Hawaii: from Hawaiian Hawai'i, from Proto-Polynesian *hawaiki. Said to mean "Place of the Gods" and be a reference to Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. See also sandwich. Related: Hawaiian (1825). First record of Hawaiian shirt is from 1943.
Maori (n.): "Polynesian inhabitant of New Zealand," 1843, native name, said to mean "of the usual kind."
Polynesia (n.): 1758, Latinization of French polynésie, coined 1756 by French writer Charles de Brosses (1709-1777) in "Histoire des navigations aux terres australes, contenant ce que l'on sait des moeurs et des productions des contrées découvertes jusqu'à ce jour" (and first in English in a review of it), coined from Greek polys "many" (see poly-) + nesos "island" (see Chersonese). Related: Polynesian.
Samoa: an indigenous name, said to be from the name of a Polynesian chieftain, or else meaning "place of the moa." Related: Samoan (1846, noun and adjective).
surfing (n.): 1955, verbal noun from surf (v.). The surfing craze went nationwide in U.S. from California in 1963. Surf-board is from 1826, originally in a Hawaiian and Polynesian context. Surf music attested from 1963.
It is highly amusing to a stranger to go out into the south part of this town, some day when the sea is rolling in heavily over the reef, and to observe there the evolutions and rapid career of a company of surf-players. The sport is so attractive and full of wild excitement to Hawaiians, and withal so healthful, that I cannot but hope it will be many years before civilization shall look it out of countenance, or make it disreputable to indulge in this manly, though it be dangerous, exercise. [the Rev. Henry T. Cheever, "Life in the Sandwich Islands," New York, 1851]

"The basis of surfing music is a rock and roll bass beat figuration, coupled with a raunch-type weird-sounding lead guitar plus wailing saxes. Surfing music has to sound untrained with a certain rough flavor to appeal to the teenagers." [music publisher Murray Wilson, quoted in "Billboard," June 29, 1963]
taboo (adj.): also tabu, 1777 (in Cook's "A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean"), "consecrated, inviolable, forbidden, unclean or cursed," explained in some English sources as being from Tongan (Polynesian language of the island of Tonga) ta-bu "sacred," from ta "mark" + bu "especially." But this may be folk etymology, as linguists in the Pacific have reconstructed an irreducable Proto-Polynesian *tapu, from Proto-Oceanic *tabu "sacred, forbidden" (compare Hawaiian kapu "taboo, prohibition, sacred, holy, consecrated;" Tahitian tapu "restriction, sacred;" Maori tapu "be under ritual restriction, prohibited"). The noun and verb are English innovations first recorded in Cook's book.
Tahiti: from native Polynesian Otahiti, of uncertain meaning. It was called in turn Sagittaria (1606, by the Portuguese), King George III Island (1767, by the British), Nouvelle-Cythère (1768, by the French). Related: Tahitian.
taro (n.): tropical food plant, 1769, from Polynesian (Tahitian or Maori) taro. Compare Hawaiian kalo.
tattoo (n.2): "pigment design in skin," 1769 (noun and verb, both first attested in writing of Capt. Cook), from a Polynesian noun (such as Tahitian and Samoan tatau, Marquesan tatu "puncture, mark made on skin"). Century Dictionary (1902) describes them as found on sailors and uncivilized people or as a sentence of punishment.
Tiki (n.): "large wooden image of the creator-ancestor of Maoris and Polynesians," 1777, from Eastern Polynesian tiki "image." Tiki torch is first recorded 1973.