Tuvaluan

Tuvaluan, self-called te ggana Tuuvalu and once known as Ellicean after the Ellice Islands, is a Polynesian language of the Ellicean group, descended from Proto-Polynesian and carried to the atolls from the direction of Samoa and Tonga. The islands later served as a stepping stone for the settlement of the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.

It falls into mutually intelligible northern and southern dialects, with the Funafuti and Vaitupu speech forming the common standard te ggana māsani. Tuvaluan is also intelligible with Tokelauan, while the people of Nui speak a dialect of Gilbertese.

Europeans first encountered the language in 1568, when Álvaro de Mendaña sighted Nui, and in 1819 Arent Schuyler de Peyster named Funafuti Ellice's Island, a name later extended to the whole archipelago.