Tasmate is the name of several places in
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 ...
.
Etymology
The term ''Tasmate'' means etymologically "dead sea" (from
Proto-Oceanic
Proto-Oceanic (abbreviated as POc) is a proto-language that comparative linguistics, historical linguists since Otto Dempwolff have reconstructed as the hypothetical common ancestor of the Oceanic languages, Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian ...
*''
tasik'' 'sea', *''
mate
Mate may refer to:
Science
* Mate, one of a pair of animals involved in:
** Mate choice, intersexual selection
*** Mate choice in humans
** Mating
* Multi-antimicrobial extrusion protein, or MATE, an efflux transporter family of proteins
Pers ...
'' 'dead'); it refers to places on the coast where the sea is quieter, and makes landing easier.
In the
Proto-Torres–Banks language
Proto-Torres-Banks (abbr. PTB) is the reconstructed ancestor of the seventeen languages of the Torres and Banks Islands of Vanuatu. Like all indigenous languages of Vanuatu, it belongs to the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian languages.
Mor ...
, ancestral to
Mota and
Mwerlap, it can be reconstructed as *''tasimate''.
Geography
The name may refer to the following entities:
*
Tasmate (Santo), a village on the west coast of
Espiritu Santo
Espiritu Santo (, ; ) is the largest island in the nation of Vanuatu, with an area of and a population of around 40,000 according to the 2009 census.
Geography
The island belongs to the archipelago of the New Hebrides in the Pacific region ...
{{Disambiguation, geo}** Tasmate language, the language spoken in that village
* Tasmate (Mota), a village on the island of Mota (island), Mota
{{Disambiguation, geo}* Tesmet (Merelava) (form taken by the name ''Tasmate'' in the local
Mwerlap language
Mwerlap is an Oceanic language spoken in the south of the Banks Islands in Vanuatu.
Its 1,100 speakers live mostly in Merelava and Merig, but a fair proportion have also settled on the east coast of Gaua island. Besides, a number of Mwerlap sp ...
), a village on the island of
Merelava
Merelava (or ''Mere Lava'') is an island in the Banks Islands of the Torba Province of northern Vanuatu.
Names
The inhabitants of Merelava call their own island ''Mwerlap'', more accurately ''N̄wërlap'' .
The name ''Merelava'' or ''M̄ere Lava ...
{{Disambiguation, geo}
{{Disambiguation, geo