| Abstract from DBPedia | Melanesia (UK: /ˌmɛləˈniːziə/, US: /ˌmɛləˈniːʒə/) is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from Indonesia's Sumba in the west to Tonga in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea and a few thousand islands. The region includes the four independent countries of Fiji, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea. It also includes parts of Indonesia – notably the provinces of Papua and West Papua as well as Maluku and the French oversea collectivity of New Caledonia. Almost all of the region is in the Southern Hemisphere; only a few small islands that are not politically considered part of Oceania—specifically the northwestern islands of Western New Guinea—lie in the Northern Hemisphere. The name Melanesia (in French, Mélanésie) was first used in 1832 by French navigator Jules Dumont d'Urville: he coined the terms Melanesia and Micronesia along the preexisting Polynesia to designate what he viewed as the three main ethnic and geographical regions forming the Pacific.メラネシア（Melanesia）は、オセアニアの海洋部の分類の一つ。概ね赤道以南、東経180度以西にある島々の総称。オーストラリア大陸より北－北東に位置する。ギリシャ語で μέλας メラス「黒い」+ νῆσος ネソス「島」から「黒い（皮膚の黒い人々が住む）島々」の意味である。 (Source: http://dbpedia.org/resource/Melanesia) |
