Pōmare I, King of Tahiti (1742 - 1803), fully in old orthography: Tu-nui-ea-i-te-atua-i-Tarahoi Vairaatoa Taina Pomare I (also known as
Tu or
Tinah or
Outu or simply as Pomare I), was the unifier and first king of Tahiti between 1788? and 1791.
Outu is the phonetic English rendering of
O Tū, Tū being the name, o the nominal predicate meaning
that is. Older literature writes his family name as Tunuieaiteatua, which leaves incertainties about the proper pronunciation as
TahitianTahitian, a Tahitic language, spoken by Tahitians, is one of the two official languages of French Polynesia . It is an Eastern Polynesian language closely related to Rarotongan, New Zealand Māori, and Hawaiian.- Alphabet :...
usually did (and does) not write
macronA macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long syllable in Græco-Roman metrics, but now also indicates that the vowel is long...
s and
glottalsThe glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English the feature is represented for example by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those attempting an authentic pronunciation of...
. Barring this incertainty, in the current proper orthography would be Tū-nui-ēa-i-te-atua meaning Great-Tū,-road-to-the-god. Tū (standing straight up) was a major Tahitian god. Ariitaimai claims that this Tū is a contraction of
atua (god), but that is unlikely. The name Pōmare was adopted later. Pō-mare means
night cougher, a nickname he took, as was common in that time, because his son coughed at night (see: Ariitaimai).
He was born at Pare, ca. 1743, second son of Teu Tunuieaiteatua by his wife, Tetupaia-i-Hauiri. He initially reigned under the regency of his father, 1743, and succeeded on the death of his father as Arii-rahi of Porionuu 23 November 1802.
As king, Pōmare I succeeded in uniting the different chiefdoms of
TahitiTahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. The island had a population of 178,133 inhabitants according to the August 2007 census. This makes it the most populous island of French Polynesia,...
into a single kingdom, composed of the islands of Tahiti itself,
MooreaMoorea is a high island in French Polynesia, part of the Society Islands, 17 km northwest of Tahiti. Its position is . Moorea means "yellow lizard" in Tahitian. An older name for the island is Aimeho, sometimes spelled Aimeo or Eimeo...
,
MehetiaMehetia or Meetia is a volcanic island in the Windward Islands, in the east of the Society Islands in French Polynesia. This island is a very young active stratovolcano 110 kilometres east of Taiarapu Peninsula of Tahiti. It has an area of 2.3 square kilometres and its highest point is...
, and the
TetiaroaTetiaroa, one of the Society Islands, is an atoll located 59 km due north of Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia located on the island of Tahiti.-Administration:...
group. His service as the first king of unified Tahiti ended when he abdicated in 1791, but he remained the regent of Tahiti from 1791 until 1803.
He married 4 times and had two sons and three daughters.
He was succeeded by Tū Tūnuiʻēʻaiteatua
Pōmare IIPōmare II, King of Tahiti , fully Tu Tunuieaiteatua Pomare II or in modern orthography Tū Tū-nui-ēa-i-te-atua Pōmare II , was the second king of Tahiti between 1782 and 1821. He was installed by his father Pōmare I at Tarahoi, 13 February 1791...
, who reigned 1803-1821.
External links
- Angela Ballara: Pomare I, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography