Origin and folklore

The origin story is an interesting tale of two sisters learning the tatau from the people of Fiji. Twin sisters traveled, swam, from Samoa to Fiji after finding out they had this strange new ritual. In the video below, the narrator tells the story of the two sisters with a bit of humor. They learned all they could from the people of Fiji with instructions to only tattoo the women. On their return journey they got distracted and forgot the instructions. They pieced together what they thought would be the instructions and made it back to Samoa. Their instructions then were to only tatau the men. (TheCoconetTV, 2019) The word itself mimics the sound the tools make while being inked and means the practice of marking the skin in the Samoan language.