Belleoram, Bonne Bay and Tattoos
What do Belleoram, Bonne Bay and a tattoo have in common? That's not a joke, 1 it's a piece of Newfoundland trivia. All three owe their English names to Captain James Cook. Cook, who was a noted explorer/cartographer, sailed around Newfoundland in the 1760s. Cook renamed the island's south coast settlement of Bande l'Arier to Belleoram and, under Cook's pen, Baya Ederra became Bonne Bay. After Cook's time on the Newfoundland coast , he headed to the South Pacific. Captain James Cook It was while Cook was in the South Pacific that he saw people practicing tatau, or what we could call tattoo. Tatau is a Tahitian word. The word appeared in English, for the first time, in a 1769 account of Captain Cook's voyage. At the time it was spelled tattaw. It is Cook's account of the tatau practice in the South Pacific that led to the popularization of the English term tattoo. I don't know whether Cook ever got tattooed but, reportedly many of the sail
