Aplow, ''Valuwa'', or ''Valuga'', is a village located on the eastern part of
Mota Lava
Mota Lava or Motalava is an island of the Banks group, in the north of Vanuatu. It forms a single coral system with the small island of Ra.
The 2009 census figures give a population of 1,640 inhabitants (Mota Lava + Ra), which amounts to a p ...
, in the
Banks Islands of
Vanuatu
Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east o ...
. Located close to it is the
island's airport, ''Valua Airport''.
Aplow also designates the whole district around this village, corresponding to the eastern side of the island; in this sense, Aplow contrasts with ''Mwotlap'', which strictly speaking designates the western half of Motalava island.
The area of Aplow used to be home of a communalect (language or dialect) known as
Volow. Volow become extinct in the 1980s, as its speakers
adopted the dominant language
Mwotlap from the western side.
Name
The name ''Aplow'' is the name of the village in
Mwotlap, which is the dominant language spoken today on the island. The same village was originally known as ''Volow'' in the now extinct
language of the same name.
Finally, the village, as well as the district around it, is called in
Mota as ''Valuwa'' (from the Maligo dialect) or ''Valuga'' (from the Veverao dialect). The form ''Valua'' is a misspelling of the Maligo dialect form.
All these forms descend from a reconstructed ''*βaluwa'' in
Proto-Torres-Banks, e.g. ''*βaˈluwa'' > . The Mwotlap form incorporates a locative prefix: *''ˌa-βaˈluwa'' > > .
Notes
References
*
Populated places in Vanuatu
Torba Province
{{Vanuatu-geo-stub