Placing Pitcairn Island Placenaming Historically: Professor A. S. C. Ross, Albert W. Moverley, Henry E. Maude, and The Pitcairnese Language

Abstract

This article documents a crucial element in the historiography of research into Pitcairn, the Pitcairn Island language. It considers the work of British linguist Professor Alan Strode Campbell Ross (1907-1980), Pitcairn Island’s first non-islander school teacher Albert Wadkins Moverley (1908-1953), and the founder of the discipline of Pacific history Henry Evans Maude (1906-2006) on the edited 1964 work <i>The Pitcairnese Language</i>, the key volume about the history and linguistics of the Pitcairn Island language. Maude’s gazetteer of Pitcairn Island placenames is evaluated with reference to the contribution it makes to <i>The Pitcairnese Language</i>. Ross’s correspondence, especially that with Maude, and how the data collected by Moverley, who lived on the island between 1949-1951 and who became Ross’s Ph.D student, is summarized and assessed in terms of how it contributed to <i>The Pitcairnese Language</i>, especially the section on Pitcairn Island placenaming (toponymy). In summary, Ross’s statement in his preface to T<i>The Pitcairnese Language</i> that “any account of a language is better than no account at all’ is appraised in terms of a historiography of research into the Pitcairn Island language.