Pacific Islander (or Pacific person; pl: Pacific people; also Oceanic person/people(s) or Oceanians), is a geographic phrase to describe the indigenous inhabitants of any of the three major sub-regions of Oceania: Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia.
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, these three regions, together with their islands, consist of:
Polynesia: The islands scattered across a tangle covering the east-central region of the Pacific Ocean. The triangle is bounded by the Hawaiian islands in the north, New Zealand in the west, and Easter Island in the east. The rest of Polynesia comprises Samoan islands (American Samoa and Samoa), the Cook Islands, French Polynesia (Tahiti and The Society Islands, Marquesas Islands, Austral Islands, and the Tuamotu Archipelago), Niue Island, Tokelau and Tuvalu, Tonga, Wallis and Futuna, and Pitcairn Island.
Melanesia: The island of New Guinea, the Bismarck and Louisiade archipelagos, the Admiralty Islands, and Bougainville Island (which make up the independent state of Maluku, Papua New Guinea), the Solomon Islands, the Santa Cruz Islands (part of the Solomon Islands), New Caledonia and Loyalty Islands, Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides), Fiji, Norfolk Island, and various smaller islands.
Micronesia: The islands of Kiribati, Nauru, the Marianas (Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands), the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia (Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei, and Kosrae, all in the Caroline Islands).
Ethnolinguistically, those Pacific Islanders who reside in Oceania are divided into two different ethnic classifications — those Austronesian peoples who speak the Oceanian languages, numbering about 2.3 million, who occupy Polynesia, Micronesia, and most of the smaller islands of Melanesia; and the Papuan peoples, those who speak the Papuan languages, who number about 7 million, and reside on the island of New Guinea and a few of the smaller islands of Melanesia located off the northeast coast of New Guinea.
Read more about Pacific Islander: Usage of Phrase in Australia, New Zealand and United States, Excluded, List of Pacific Peoples
Famous quotes containing the word pacific:
“It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.... It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)