Talk:Ita Mai Tai

Name

 * The name Ita Mai Tai comes from the Tahitian language and means "no damn good". The name was coined by Bruce C. Heezen and is probably a reference to unsuccessful attempts to obtain drill cores during the early research history of the seamount.

As far as I can tell, none of the cited sources (Wedgeworth/Kellogg ← Tharp ← Heezen) are knowledgeable (let alone specialists) in Tahitian; they're all geologists, and are not appropriate sources to cite on the issue of what a Tahitian phrase means. I haven't been able to verify the alleged meaning using a Tahitian dictionary: ʻita (with an ʻokina) does mean "not", but neither mai nor tai seem to have any relevant meanings. --Lvovmauro (talk) 15:12, 20 October 2018 (UTC)


 * I was thrown off by the spacing; maitaʻi (one word) means "good". So it would appear the "damn" is an embellishment. I still doubt whether this phrase is grammatical or idiomatic. There are several ways to express negation in Tahitian, and ʻita is apparently a past tense form. --Lvovmauro (talk) 15:21, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Seems like Heezen got the meaning of the string right but spelled it wrong. That's something I've seen rather frequently with place names since they are not obliged to be grammatically accurate to their source language (Ioah Guyot is another instance). I don't think it is an "error" strictly speaking so I'll remove the maintenance tag. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:59, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
 * However, we might want to indicate somehow that it is not strictly accurate; do you have a dictionary that we can cite as source? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:00, 20 October 2018 (UTC)