A tropical beach on Upolu Island, Samoa, with sand and rocks at the shore and palm trees slightly inland
17 January 2022
Samoa is an Indigenous name, although its meaning in the Samoan language is disputed. It could mean sacred place, so called because it is said to be where Tagaloa, the chief god in the Samoan pantheon, created the world. Alternatively, it could mean place of the moa, a reference to an extinct bird. The Polynesian people arrived in the islands as early as 1,000 BCE. First contact with Europeans was in 1722.
Samoa was partitioned by an 1899 treaty between the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States, which awarded the western islands to Germany and the eastern ones to the United States. What was then known as Western Samoa was ruled by Germany until 1914, and then occupied by New Zealand at the beginning of World War I. New Zealand continued to administer it under League of Nations and United Nations mandates until it became independent in 1962. It dropped the Western from its name in 1997. Eastern or American Samoa remains a territory of the United States.
The Independent State of Samoa (Malo Saʻoloto Tutoʻatasi o Sāmoa) consists of two main islands, Savai'i and Upolu, and several smaller islands. American Samoa (Amerika Sāmoa) consists of five main islands and two atolls.
Louis-Antoine de Bougainville dubbed the islands Les Îles des Navigateurs (Navigator Islands) in 1772, after the sailing skills of the Samoan people. The name Samoa appears in English by 1824, at first in missionary circles. From the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine of August of that year:
The Wavow natives hold intercourse with the natives of Samoa, or Navigator’s Islands; and the Tonga people sometimes go as far as the Feejee Isles. But the natives both of Samoa and Feejee speak a dialect not easily understood by the Tongese.
The coconut, caramel, and chocolate Girl Scout cookie dubbed the Samoa was introduced in 1975. As is the case with many product names, the origin is disputed and shrouded by layers of corporate propaganda. The name Samoa most likely arose because the coconut ingredient is associated with tropical paradises, but some say that it is a play on some more / smore.
Sources:
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
Loboy, Jim. “The History of Girl Scout Cookies.” WYTV.com, 25 March 2021.
Madison, Tara. “Caramel deLites v. Samoas—What’s in a Name?” Intellectualproperty.law, 12 March 2018.
“South Sea Missions.” Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine, August 1824, 558. ProQuest Historical Periodicals.
Photo credit: Teinesavaii, 2009. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.