Santa

Why do they call Kiritimati, Christmas Island?

I had always wanted to go to Kiritimati but I wanted to know why they also call it Christmas Island. Please, no silly answers, thanks a lot!

Public Comments

1. 1) Kiritimati was discovered by Captain James Cook on Christmas Eve (December 24), 1777. It was claimed by the United States under the Guano Islands Act of 1856, though little actual mining of guano took place.This claim was formally ceded by the Treaty of Tarawa between US and Kiribati, signed in 1979 and ratified in 1983. Permanent settlement started by 1882, mainly by workers in coconut plantations and fishermen, but due to an extreme drought which killed off tens of thousands of Coconut Palms – about 75% of Kiritimati's population of this plant – the island was once again abandoned between 1905 and 1912. 2) Christmas Island. The name seems out of place on a map of the tropics, sounding so unlike the "nearby" islands of Hawaii, 1300 miles to the north, or Tahiti, about as far to the south. In stark contrast to those mountainous Edens, this lowlying atoll was uninhabited at the time of Cook's Christmas Eve landing in 1777. It was dry and barren, apparently a period of drought; he found no evidence of earlier settlement, was pessimistic about its potential for commercial development. Nevertheless, for much of the next two centuries, Englishmen, Australians and Americans made various and regular attempts to turn a profit here. They left their momentos, perhaps none so striking as the village names: London, Poland, Paris, Banana. But the 'industry' which seems to have triumphed is the one Cook didn't expect. Today, in the way of the tropical atoll, it is productive as a copra plantation, and as a fishing ground. Christmas Island is the largest coral atoll in the world with an area of 248 square miles of which 125 square miles is land and the remainder lagoon. It is 2,015 miles from Tarawa, capital of the Republic of Kiribati; 1,335 miles from Honolulu; 4,000 miles from Sydney, Australia and 3,250 miles from San Francisco. It lies between longitude 157 degrees 10' west and 157 degrees 34' west and latitudes 1 degree 42' north and 2 degrees 3' north. It is 145 miles north of the equator.
2. There are actually 2 Christmas Islands, one in the nation of Kiribati in the Pacific that has a local name of Kiritimati, the other in the Indian Ocean that is an external territory of Australia and was uninhabited when discovered by Europeans which is why it does not have a local name. Both were named by European explorers because they were first encountered on Christmas Day
3. In Gilbertese (the language of the country Kiribati) they pronounce "ti" the same way we say "ss" in English. So Kiritimati is almost a literal phonetic translation of Christmas into their own language. They say it in much the same way. It just looks different because of their spelling. The Island was discovered by Captain Cook on Christmas eve, 1777. So it was named after the day. Christmas Island is the first inhabited place in the world to see the new year in (due to a re-alignment of the international date line in 1995). post edit: There is another island also called Christmas Island (for the same reasons) located south of Indonesia's main island of Java. This island is governed by Australia.
4. The island was previously called Christmas Island when it made up part of the former British colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands and was called that because it was discovered by Captain James Cook on Christmas Eve, 1777. According to Wikipedia, the following is how it came by its present name: "The name "Kiritimati" is a rather straightforward transliteration of the English word "Christmas" into Gilbertese – where the 'ti' combination is pronounced 's' – and thus pronounced [kəˈrɪsməs]." It would be very confusing if it was to continue being called Christmas Island because there is another island of the same name which is an Australian offshore territory in the Indian Ocean.