Gela

The Gela are an Oceanic people of the Nggela Islands, a compact group of four larger islands and some fifty islets in the central Solomon Islands, north of Guadalcanal. Their language, formerly also called Florida, belongs to the Southeast Solomonic group and has three closely similar dialects.

The islands were first recorded by Europeans on 16 April 1568, when the Santiago, the brigantine of Mendaña's Spanish expedition, charted them as Pascua Florida after the church festival; the Florida label then clung to the group for centuries.