Across the islands of the Marianas, pottery once played a central role in daily life. Clay vessels were used for cooking, storing water, and carrying food from the hearth to the community. Yet when we look for the traditional Chamorro word for pottery, we find a puzzle. Many of the words used toda, such as kalåhi for a large pot, katdiritu for a small one, and pot la’uya for a cooking vessel, are borrowed from Spanish or Philippine languages (Topping, Ogo, & Dungca, 1975). So what was the native Chamorro word for pottery before foreign influence?

One candidate appears in older Chamorro dictionaries: tinåha. It is defined simply as “clay pot” or “earthen vessel” (Topping et al., 1975). Unlike the other terms, tinåha does not resemble Spanish or Tagalog words. Linguistic evidence suggests that it may have much deeper roots.

Across the Austronesian world, the word for “earth” or “land” often appears as tanah in Malay and Indonesian, tany in Malagasy, and honua in Hawaiian (Blust & Trussel, 2020). All of these descend from the Proto-Austronesian root tanah, meaning “earth, soil, or land.” The Chamorro word for earth, tano, belongs to the same linguistic family (Topping et al., 1975). When we look at tinåha through this lens, the connection becomes clear.

In Chamorro, the prefix tina- can mean “made from” or “something that is formed” (Topping et al., 1975). When combined with a root meaning “earth,” tinåha could literally mean “something made of earth.” That would make it not only a practical description of a clay pot but also a poetic one. A vessel shaped from the land itself.

This linguistic relationship ties Chamorro to its wider Austronesian relatives. The same root that describes the ground beneath one’s feet appears in words for land, island, and creation across the Pacific and Indian Oceans (Blust, 2013). In every case, the earth is both the source of life and the material of craft.

While colonial history introduced Spanish words like caldera and cazuela into everyday Chamorro (Bautista, 2019), the older form tinåha may preserve an earlier worldview. It reflects a time when pottery was more than a household object. It was a meeting of human hands and island earth, guided by an understanding that both were part of the same living system.

As interest in traditional pottery grows, the question of language becomes just as meaningful as the practice itself. Using a word like tinåha invites us to think about how language shapes the way we see our environment. It reminds us that before colonial contact, Chamorro people already had the words to describe a craft rooted in the land. Words connected to tano, to tanah, and to the shared Austronesian heritage that spans the sea.

References

• Bautista, R. (2019). Spanish Influence on Chamorro Vocabulary and Material Culture. University of Guam Press.
• Blust, R. (2013). The Austronesian Languages. Asia-Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
• Blust, R., & Trussel, S. (2020). Austronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD). Retrieved from https://www.trussel2.com/ACD
• Topping, D. M., Ogo, P. M., & Dungca, J. C. (1975). Chamorro–English Dictionary. University of Hawaii Press.