Torres Islands - Name

Name

One of the most important pre-European names by which this group of islands was known by its inhabitants and other neighbouring societies was Vava (or Vave), . However, sometime in the early nineteenth century the name Torres was given to the group by European cartographers in remembrance of the sixteenth-century Portuguese navigator Luis Vaz de Torres, who briefly visited some of the islands of North and Central Vanuatu in April, May and June 1606, and whose name was also given to the important Torres Strait that separates mainland Australia from the island of New Guinea. Ironically, neither Torres, his commander, the Portuguese captain Fernandes de Queirós (both serving the Spanish crowd), nor any of their subordinates ever saw, heard of or even came near to the Torres Islands during their cruise through the archipelago. Nevertheless, through its repeated appearance in European charts, the name of Torres eventually stuck and the islands have been known as such for almost two hundred years. Nowadays, the inhabitants of this archipelago have dropped the old name Vave, which is only recalled by a few elder people. They now designate their group of islands as ‘Torres’ – even though they neither know nor concern themselves with the story and meaning of this name.