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(D’Urville, 2003). This is an exonym, a name given to a group of people by another group
of people, and is not the way the Melanesians refer to themselves. The word Melanesia
therefore refers to islands inhabited by dark-skinned people with curly hair. At the time,
few would have taken exception to this. However, today, we understand firstly that using
physical appearance to classify people is unreliable and it has also been used to commit
some horrific crimes. We consider this as racism and avoid it.
Finally, we can point to the irony in the use of Melanesian as a flag for freedom from
oppression or colonialism in the light of its origin as a foreign exonym that was coined by
early European explorers who coined the name on the basis of what we now consider a
racist and essentialist perspective.
Considering these problems, linguists tend to avoid using the term Melanesian with
respect to attempts to characterize the languages or peoples of the region. However,
because it is used in this book, we use it here to refer to the geographical area and sub-
regional culture of Oceania.
Linguistics can help us to better understand the Melanesian world. Linguistic evidence
can be used to bring clarity to our understanding of how many languages there are, what
their geographical distribution is, how many speakers there are, what the status of the
languages is with regard to vitality and endangerment, how languages are related to each
other in families. We can also get a better understanding of the past, building a picture of
the ancestors of today’s languages, and their place of origin and patterns of migration.
Such empirical data can be used on its own or in conjunction with findings from genetics,
archaeology, and anthropology, to arrive at a detailed picture of the language situation in
each of the countries in the Melanesian region and to use such empirical findings to either
support or challenge various claims and assumptions about the region.

The Status of Languages in the Region
In order to better understand the linguistic situation in the Melanesian area, we look now
at the question of how many languages there are in each country and what their status
is. We look in turn at the language situation in Fiji, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, New
Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, and Indonesia. The concept of status here
refers to whether the languages have an important or widespread function in society, and
whether they possess a strong vitality or whether they are weak, or endangered. Most of the
information presented here is taken from Lewis et al. (2015), unless mentioned otherwise.

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