RAJESH Lal (FT6/6) tells of a friend of his who, presumably tongue in cheek, suggests that the toponym (place-name) Calia, near Navua, is derived from the Fijian words ca “bad” and lialia “stupid”.
The origin of this place-name is rather more prosaic: it is simply the word for a channel in the river. It derives from the verb cali “to flow” and the nominalising suffix — a, hence meaning “place where water flows”. A more common variant is salia, which features in many village and locality names in eastern Fiji such as Salia, Nasalia and Saliadrau, and is used in Lau to mean a channel through the reef, and in Macuata to mean the ocean.
The same suffix has been very productive in producing not only place-names, but other nouns from verbs, such as tabua “that which is tabu”, tubua “that which grows”, tunua “that which burns, ie, hearth for firing pottery”.
