Tokelauan

Tokelauan is a Polynesian language of the Austronesian family, spoken on the atolls of Atafu, Nukunonu and Fakaofo, and until modern times also on Swains Island, called Olohega in the language itself; Tokelau means north-northeast, or north wind. Its speakers descend from settlers who arrived from the direction of Samoa roughly a thousand years ago, and the atolls may have served as a gateway into eastern Polynesia.

Each atoll governed itself separately under chiefly clans, but all three kept a single language and an oral tradition centred on the god Tui Tokelau. Tokelauan's closest relative is Tuvaluan, with which it is mutually intelligible. It had no traditional written form and was transmitted by word of mouth.

John Byron sighted Atafu in 1765 and named it Duke of York's Island; Edward Edwards found Nukunonu in 1791, and an American whaler sighted Fakaofo in 1835.