ABSTRACT
The name Namoluk (pronounced ccNah-mow-luke”) means “lagoon in the middle.” This refers to Namoluk’s position midway between the other two islands that make up what is known as Lukeisel1-Losap and Nama to the north-and the three atolls that lie to the south, called Nomoi-Ettal, Lukunoch, and Satawan (see Map 1.2). From 1795, when the English sea captain James Mortlock sailed past Nomoi in the good ship Young William and humbly bestowed his name on this atoll cluster, Nomoi has been known to westerners as “the Mortlocks.”2 In the post-World War II era this name was extended by American colonial officials to the islands of Lukeisel as well. Lukeisel was called “the Upper Mortlocks” in contrast to “the Lower Mortlocks” south of Namoluk. Transmuting “Mortlocks” into the sound pattern of their own language, the denizens of these islands today refer to themselves as chon Morschlok, or “Mortlockese.”
