"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 18/01/18 (taboo, tattoo)

I often talk about how English hoovers up words and expressions from almost every tongue it encounters, and it has done since its very beginning. It's estimated 60% of the words we use come from Greek or Latin. Only 10% of those directly, the others have com via French or other Romance languages, particularly. Germanic accounts for about 25%, if not more. French, when you take into account those Latin words, at least 25%, possibly even as much as 40%. So much of our language made up of words that we take from other people. But we don't often talk about words from Tongan. And Tongan is a language spoken in Tonga, in the south Pacific, and it's given us two words that we use very, very often. They were both brought to us by Captain Cook. I'll begin with taboo. Taboo cames over from the Polynesian islands. It was introduced, as I say, into English by Captain James Cook in 1777. And he wrote these wonderful narratives of his voyages. And he wrote, "not one of them", talking about the people he had met on his travels, "Not one of them would sit down or eat a bit og anything, it was all taboo". And he goes on to explain that the word was generally used to mean "forbidden". The other one is tattoo, the tattoo on the skin. Again. that came into English from the Pacific Islands and was first recorded onboard HMS Endeavour. But Cook wasn't the first one to use it, because it has been found in the diaries of the naturalist and explorer Josef Banks, who also wrote a very, very detailed journals about their trip. And he recorded, "I shall now mentioned the way they mark themselves indelibly. Each of them is so markes by their humour or disposition"/ In other words, their art was a reflection of their personality, just as we have tattoos today. Cook themself recorded the same word a little bit later. "Both sexes paint their bodies. "Tataw" - spelld with a W at the end -  as it is called in their language. This is done by inlying the colour of black under their skins". As for its meaning, it comes from Tongan word from to write, very simply. Not the same as military tattoo, I'll just explain that onevery briefly. That's the drum or the bugle call to recall a soldiers to their quarters in the evening. That comes from Dutch - "doe den tap toe", which is literally meant " close the tap". And it was an instruction to close the tap on the cask full of rum or beer or whatever the alcohol was at the time, because drinking time was over and it was time to go back to the quarters. So, very different tattoo, but the tattoo on our skin and taboo both go back to Tongan.