Willaumez

Willaumez is the game's name for a linkage of closely related Oceanic languages centred on the volcanic Willaumez Peninsula, on the north coast of New Britain in Papua New Guinea. Its members are Bola, also called Bakovi and spoken by the Bola and Melamela peoples, along with Bulu, Meramera and Nakanai, all grouped in the Meso-Melanesian branch of Oceanic.

Linguists treat the peninsula as the likely centre from which the Meso-Melanesian languages dispersed to New Ireland and the Solomon Islands. It received its French name from the d'Entrecasteaux expedition, which surveyed these coasts in 1792 and 1793, honouring the naval officer Jean-Baptiste Philibert Willaumez who sailed with it.