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[bgreen]

Below is information sent to me by John Clark regarding his research into paipo. Besides design innovation Jim Growney & John Waidelich with Valvalentine came up with the term paipo nalu.

Bob


Aloha Ian,
For the past four years I've been researching material for a book that
I've titled "Hawaiian Surfing: Traditions From the Past." I recently
completed the manuscript, Ben Finney and Puakea Nogelmeier reviewed
it, and the UH Press agreed to publish it. It should be out next year
(2010). In the text I identify and describe the types of surfing that native
Hawaiians did, one of which was pae po'o, or bodyboarding.

......

I've always been interested in the origin of the term paipo, too, so
over the years as I've researched information on Hawaii's beaches, I've
gather information on paipo boards, too. One example is the information in
Hawaii Place Names from Alfred Solomon. While it's true that "paepo" can be
translated as "night landing", I've learned since that the original
word was actually "pae po'o". The following is from my manuscript:

In the earliest descriptions of surfboards by Hawaiian scholars, the
smallest boards, those that were shorter than six feet in length, were
generically called papa li`ili`i, or "small boards." During the early
1900s, the name papa li`ili`i was changed on two fronts with
non-Hawaiian surfers calling them bellyboards, because they were most often ridden
prone, the rider laying on his or her "belly," and with Hawaiian
surfers in Waikiki calling them pae po`o boards.


Pae po`o is an interesting word. It does not appear in any Hawaiian
dictionaries, Hawaiian language newspapers, or writings of the
prominent Hawaiian scholars of the 1800s, such as `I`i, Kamakau, Kepelino, and
Malo, who described traditional Hawaiian surf sports. The term appears to
have been coined by Hawaiian surfers in Waikiki circa 1900, where it was
commonly used to mean bodysurfing or bodysurfing with a small wooden
bodyboard. The literal translation of pae po`o is "ride [a wave]
head-first", or in other words, bodysurf, and a papa pae po`o was a
bodysurfing board, or what surfers today call a bodyboard.



In everyday conversation, pae po`o was often shortened to pae po,
which is common among Hawaiian words that end with double "o's," such as
Napo`opo`o on the island of Hawai`i, which is often pronounced Napopo. The
popular spelling used today, paipo, was coined by Hawaiian surfing legend
Wally Froiseth, who, besides being an excellent surfer, was an exceptional
paipo board rider who was famous for standing on his twin-fin board while
riding big waves. From 1956 to 1986, Froiseth made approximately 150 paipo
boards, which he sold to friends and other surfers, putting a decal on
each board to identify it as his product. No one before him, however,
had ever spelled pae po, so without the benefit of seeing the word in
print, Froiseth spelled it as he heard it, pai po. His decals read, "Hawaiian
Pai Po Board. Mfg. by Froiseth." Froiseth sold some of his boards to
surfers from California, which helped to introduce the word and its spelling
outside of Hawai`i, and today paipo is the accepted term for wooden
bodyboards.


At 03:20 PM 18/06/2009, you wrote:

Aloha Bob,
Wally made his first Hawaiian Pai Po Board in December 1955, but he
didn't like the way it rode. He re-designed it early in 1956 and applied
for a patent on it on May 9, 1956.

The decal was used only on his paipo boards, not on his surfboards.

I found a photo of Wally online in one of Malcolm Gault-Williams
interviews with him. He's holding one of his paipo boards. Perhaps there
are other photos at other sites.

Regards,
John


At 07:41 AM 19/06/2009, you wrote:
Aloha Bob,
Wally and many other Waikiki surfers from the early 1900s, especially
native Hawaiians, used the term paipo to mean both bodysurfing and
bodyboarding. I have included interviews with Wally and a number of other
informants in my book to provide the supporting documentation (the
"missing link") for the information in the passage that I sent in my first
email.

Thanks for including the entries from the 1865 Hawaiian dictionary. FYI,
the book is A Dictionary of the Hawaiian Language by Lorrin Andrews. It's
one of the standard reference books here in the islands and is available
in our bookstores, having been reprinted in 2003 by Island Heritage
Publishing.

Regards,
John

[rodndtube]

Bob, this is a great piece of information. I look forward to the publication of John Clark's forthcoming book. In the meantime, are we free to publish this information on the Internet (my main web page)?

If only this old boy (me) was a helluva lot smarter he would certainly think that a research trip to Hawaii would be in-play to meet and interview some of these guys before we all fade away. Maybe this would make for a fine February 2010 excursion?
_________________
rodNDtube
"Prone to ride"
I love my papa li`ili`i

[rodndtube]

John Clark gave me the green light, so the information is now included on the MyPaipoBoards web page.
_________________
rodNDtube
"Prone to ride"
I love my papa li`ili`i