Kola Island, the Gola People and Golaavahi in the Maldives: Reconsidering the Historical Identity of Foalhavahi (Diego Garcia)

An Austronesian Name at Opposite Ends of an Ocean

Far to the east of Madagascar, among the Aru Islands of eastern Indonesia, lies Kola Island. Kola Island and neighbouring communities preserve a language called Kola. Indonesia’s official language database records Kola in the Aru Islands and lists Warilau, Kulaha, and Marlasi as alternative names. Glottolog classifies Kola, ISO 639-3 kvv, within Austronesian and Malayo-Polynesian (Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa 2024; Glottolog 2026).

Thousands of kilometres westward, Madagascar preserves another strikingly similar name. Pierron and colleagues record traditions of legendary early inhabitants called Vazimba, Kimosy, and Gola. They caution that remembered groups cannot simply be mapped onto discrete ancient genetic populations (Pierron et al. 2017, E6504). Between these eastern and western points lies a third body of evidence. Maldivian historical tradition preserves the identifier Golaavehi. A separate historical form, al-Qalaawahi, requires comparison with it. South of the Maldives proper lies Foalhavahi, the great lagoon island within Folhlhavai.

The correspondence is not evidence of common origin by itself. Its significance lies in the historical geography that makes the relationship testable. Kola exists in the Austronesian east. Gola survives in Malagasy remembered tradition. Golaavehi and al-Qalaawahi occur in Maldivian historical tradition. Between Indonesia and Madagascar stood Foalhavahi, within an oceanic world shaped by long-distance movement, exchange, and navigation.

From Island Southeast Asia to Madagascar

The settlement of Madagascar provides the necessary historical setting. Malagasy is an Austronesian language whose closest core relationships lie with the Southeast Barito languages of southern Borneo. Malagasy populations also have substantial Southeast Asian and eastern African Bantu ancestry. Pierron and colleagues find a history of heterogeneous admixture. They argue that African and Asian inputs were likely independent rather than the result of an already mixed population arriving on the island (Adelaar 2009; Pierron et al. 2017, E6498–E6506).

This does not identify the founders of Malagasy with the Aru Islands or with Kola speakers. It establishes a broader fact. People, languages, and cultural practices moved westward from Island Southeast Asia into Madagascar. Beaujard argues that Malagasy history contains several Indonesian linguistic and cultural layers. He also traces continuing movement from Southeast Asia, East Africa, and India through the second millennium (Beaujard 2011, 169–89).

Medieval Arabic geographical writing indicates that eastern maritime activity in the western Indian Ocean continued after Madagascar’s first settlement. The Kitāb ʿAjāʾib al-Hind records Waqwaq mariners operating around Sofala and the Zanj coast in 945 or 946 CE. The primary text does not identify them as Indonesians. Al-Idrisi, writing in 1154, described ships from the islands of Zabaj travelling to the Zanj coast and trading there. These sources show a connected maritime world. They do not establish a Kola connection (Blench 2012, 279–82).

The Problem of Gola

The Malagasy evidence is independent of the Aru material. Pierron and colleagues identify Gola among remembered early populations of Madagascar. They do not connect Gola to Kola, Aru, or any particular Indonesian community (Pierron et al. 2017, E6504). Nor does the modern existence of Kola Island and Kola language prove that Kola and Gola were once the same name.

The historical depth of Kola remains unresolved. Modern records establish that Kola is embedded in the geographical and linguistic nomenclature of northern Aru, alongside forms including Kolaha, Kulaha, Warilau, and Marlasi (Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa 2024; Glottolog 2026). They do not establish whether Kola originated as an island name, a language name, a community designation, or an autonym. Nor do they show that Kola speakers moved westward to Madagascar.

A proposed relationship between Kola and Gola requires more than a comparison of consonants. It requires a credible transmission setting. It also requires possible intermediary languages, chronological compatibility, and independently evidenced borrowing patterns. The question is whether a pathway existed through which Kola could have reached Malagasy as Gola. It is not whether the two forms can be made to resemble each other in the abstract.

Foalhavahi Between East and West

Foalhavahi becomes important because it occupied a potentially useful position within the central Indian Ocean. Foalhavahi refers to the great lagoon island. Folhlhavai, Holhlhavai, and Pullobay refer to the wider southern island geography. Foalhavahi later appeared in European cartography as Diego Garcia. The wider territory was subsequently classified under the colonial name Chagos.

Pierre-Yves Manguin places Folhlhavai within the navigational world of pre-modern Malay shipping. His argument is geographical. Unusually southern descriptions of the Maldives make sense when Folhlhavai is included within a wider Malay maritime horizon. In the same context, he notes that Foalhavahi offered favourable conditions as a stopover. He cites an East India Company description of “an excellent and capacious harbour” (Manguin 2011, 271–78).

This does not prove that Foalhavahi served as a Kola-associated settlement. It does not establish a permanent pre-European population. It establishes that the island belonged to a maritime environment in which anchorage, renewal of supplies, and long-distance movement were possible. A maritime station need not resemble a later agricultural colony. Navigators, fishers, seasonal residents, or small communities could have used a lagoon environment without leaving the same record expected from a permanent settlement.

Golaavehi and the Maldivian Evidence

The Maldivian material supplies the third point of inquiry. The Raadhavalhi preserves five occurrences of the identifier. Golaavehi Kanbulo appears on page 19 in a Hilaalee genealogical context. Golaavehi Nasiruddeen appears on page 20. Page 23 records both Golaavehi Sanfaa Ranikilege and Golaavehi Ranikilege. Golaavehi Aisha Ranikilege appears on page 28 (Raadhavalhi 1979, 19–20, 23, 28).

These forms are not modern inventions built from Kola or Malagasy Gola. They occur within Maldivian historical tradition. They require explanation on their own terms. Hassan Taj al-Din’s Tārīkh Islām Dībā Mahal preserves the separate form al-Qalaawahi (Taj al-Din 1982).

Golaavahi, by contrast, is not treated here as an independently attested historical place-name. It is the proposed geographical reconstruction through which the relationship among Golaavehi, al-Qalaawahi, and Foalhavahi can be investigated. The distinction between evidence and reconstruction is central. Golaavehi and al-Qalaawahi are attested historical forms. Golaavahi is the proposed bridge. Its identification with Foalhavahi is the geographical hypothesis. Neither step has yet been demonstrated.

Nasirudhdheen Golaavehi and Scribal Culture

Nasirudhdheen Golaavehi raises a second, narrower question about the cultural setting in which the Golaavehi identifier appears. Madagascar’s Sorabe tradition was an Arabic-derived writing system adapted to Malagasy. It was associated with Antemoro literate communities that preserved religious, genealogical, astrological, and historical texts. Sorabe belongs to the wider Islamic Indian Ocean world in which Arabic literacy was adapted to local languages and institutions (Beaujard 2011, 181–84).

The comparison with Thaana must remain carefully bounded. Sorabe and Thaana are not the same script. No direct graphical derivation from Sorabe to Thaana has been demonstrated. The argument does not propose that Nasirudhdheen Golaavehi invented Thaana. It does not claim that Thaana descends from Sorabe. Nor does it reduce a Maldivian script to a Malagasy source.

The comparison is historical and contextual. Sorabe and Thaana emerged within Indian Ocean societies shaped by Islam, Arabic literacy, and vernacular textual practice. Their histories, functions, and graphical structures were different. Within the present hypothesis, the Golaavehi material raises a limited possibility. Mobile communities connected with the southern Indian Ocean may have transmitted elements of a wider scribal culture into the Maldives. Those influences could then have been transformed within specifically Maldivian linguistic and documentary traditions.

This possibility is subsidiary to the article’s central argument. It neither proves nor is required to prove a relationship among Kola, Gola, Golaavehi, and Foalhavahi. Any stronger claim would require direct palaeographic comparison of letter forms, manuscript traditions, chronology, and transmission routes.

Gola and Vahi

The proposed reconstruction has a linguistic basis that deserves testing. Dhivehi vahi or vehi belongs to a semantic field involving locality, habitation, and inhabitants. The term rashuvehi, referring to an inhabitant of an island, illustrates the relevant range (Fritz 2021). A reconstruction of Gola plus vahi would therefore allow readings such as “Gola habitation,” “place of the Gola,” or a related locative expression.

This is a proposal, not a completed etymology. Its evaluation depends on the chronology of Golaavehi, al-Qalaawahi, Folovahi, Foalhavahi, and the wider regional forms Folhlhavai, Holhlhavai, and Pullobay. Some may be endonyms. Others may be exonyms. Some may refer to the island. Others may refer to the wider archipelago. Some may represent European attempts to write unfamiliar local sounds. If the earliest evidence contradicts the proposed reconstruction, the hypothesis must change or be abandoned.

An Open Historical Question

None of this establishes that Kola, Gola, and Golaavahi are one historical name. It does establish that they can no longer be dismissed as an isolated resemblance without investigation. Kola exists independently in the Austronesian east. Gola survives independently in Malagasy memory. Golaavehi and al-Qalaawahi occur independently in Maldivian historical tradition. Foalhavahi stood geographically between the eastern and western worlds connected by centuries of maritime movement.

The next task is to test the relationship. Earlier records may clarify the history of the name Kola. Direct readings of the Maldivian sources may clarify Golaavehi and al-Qalaawahi. Historical linguistics must explain how Golaavehi could relate to reconstructed Golaavahi. It must also identify a credible pathway through which Kola could have reached Malagasy Gola. Until that evidence is available, the hypothesis remains open and testable.

References

Adelaar, K. Alexander. 2009. “Towards an Integrated Theory about the Indonesian Migrations to Madagascar.” In Austronesian Diaspora and the Ethnogeneses of People in Indonesian History, edited by Truman Simanjuntak, Ingrid Pojoh, and Mohammad Hisyam, 149–72. Jakarta: LIPI Press.

Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa. 2024. “Kola.” Data Pokok Kebahasaan dan Kesastraan. Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, Republic of Indonesia.

Beaujard, Philippe. 2011. “The First Migrants to Madagascar and Their Introduction of Plants: Linguistic and Ethnological Evidence.” Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 46 (2): 169–89.

Blench, Roger. 2012. “Two Vanished African Maritime Traditions and a Parallel from South America.” African Archaeological Review 29: 273–92.

Fritz, Sonja. 2021. Dhivehi: The Language of the Maldives. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Glottolog. 2026. “Kola.” Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Manguin, Pierre-Yves. 2011. “The Maldives Connection: Pre-Modern Malay World Shipping across the Indian Ocean.” In Civilisations des mondes insulaires, edited by Chantal Radimilahy and Narivelo Rajaonarimanana, 261–84. Paris: Karthala.

Pierron, Denis, Margit Heiske, Harilanto Razafindrazaka, et al. 2017. “Genomic Landscape of Human Diversity across Madagascar.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (32): E6498–E6506.

Raadhavalhi. 1979. Official chronicle of Maldivian royal succession. Official edition/reproduction. Malé: President’s Office, through the National Council for Historical and Linguistic Research.

Taj al-Din, Hassan. 1982. Tārīkh Islām Dībā Mahal, Part I, with continuation by Qadi Muhammad Muhibb al-Din and Qadi Ibrahim Siraj al-Din. Critical edition by Hikoichi Yajima. Tokyo.