Pai

Pai is one of the two spirit-women, with Vau, who in Nanumean tradition occupied the sandbank of Nanumea before any human settlement. When the warrior Tefolaha arrived he wagered the island on a contest of names; the two women demanded that he leave unless he could name them, but he tricked them into calling out their own names and named them correctly while keeping his own hidden. Bound by the rule that to know a name is to hold power, Pai and Vau were forced to abandon Nanumea, and the sand that spilled from their baskets as they fled is said to have formed the small islets of Te Motu Foliki, Lafogaki and Teaafua a Taepoa.

Domains

• spirit beings
• islets and landforms

Powers

• to spill sand from a fleeing basket and so form the small islets of Nanumea

Relations

• sibling: VauPai and Vau are the paired spirit-women who jointly hold Nanumea before Tefolaha and are always named together.Keith S. Chambers and Anne Chambers, Tuu mo Iloga: The Nanumea Ethnographic Archive. (secondary)
• enemy: TefolahaPai loses the contest of names to the settler Tefolaha and is driven from Nanumea.Keith S. Chambers, Heirs of Tefolaha (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1984). (secondary)

Sources

• Pai is one of the two female spirits (aitu) who held the atoll of Nanumea before the arrival of Tefolaha, by whom she was outwitted in a contest of names and forced to leave.: Keith S. Chambers, Heirs of Tefolaha: Tradition and Social Organization in Nanumea, a Polynesian Atoll Community (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1984). (secondary); Simati Faaniu et al., Tuvalu: A History, ed. Hugh Laracy (Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific; Funafuti: Ministry of Social Services, 1983). (secondary)