This essay on mostly-archaic terms and phrases used to describe “surfing,” “surfer,” and “surfboard” is excerpted from the Introduction to Pacific Passages: an Anthology of Surf Writing, by Patrick Moser, published in 2008 by the University of Hawaii Press.

The term "surfriding," though mostly archaic, is nevertheless useful in characterizing the general act of riding waves with a board in any position: prone, kneeling, standing, or any combination of these. Many early accounts of wave riding, like those from Captain James Cook’s third voyage, do not specify that native surfers of Tahiti and Hawaii were standing on their boards (what we would call surfing today). The mariners used a variety of expressions to explain what they saw—

diversion, amusement, playing in the surf

—which could encompass any manner of riding waves.

The first description that notes natives standing on surfboards occurs in James Morrison’s narrative on Tahitians, witnessed sometime in the years 1788-1789. This does not mean that Hawaiians were not standing on their boards when Cook visited, only that the Westerners did not specify as much. This is the case in many descriptions throughout the 19th century as well, and thus "surfriding" seems to be the more appropriate term for that era.

 also hold the honor of being the terms in longest continual use to describe the act of riding waves and those who ride them. The former appears for the first time apparently in Edward T. Perkins’s 

Na Motu: or, Reef-Rovings in the South Seas

 (1854). Describing his experience in the waves on Maui with a group of “about twenty girls, of various ages, and a dozen boys,” Perkins wrote: “the art of surf-riding is not so simple as it would seem.” Because the verb 

 had not yet come into usage in the sense of “to ride waves,” Perkins wrote that he “sported” in the waves” for about 15 minutes until he wiped out: “a roller caught me as it broke, and wrenching the board from my hands, whirled me along in every conceivable attitude; and on recovering from the shock, I was compelled to abandon my aquatic sports for the remainder of the day.” Perkins was not surfing in the sense we would use the word today (again, standing on a board), but rather bellyboarding. And so surfriding is indeed the appropriate term in this case.

Other terms in use during this period that have subsequently died out are 

. (This last term was used by Mark Twain.) 

 still appears in contemporary book titles such as O. B. Patterson’s 

 first appears apparently in Reverend Henry T. Cheever’s 

Life in the Sandwich Islands: or, The Heart of the Pacific, as it Was and Is

 (1851). The sport, observed Cheever, requires "strength of muscle and sleight-of-hand, to keep the head and shoulders just ahead and clear of the great crested wall that is every moment impending over one, and threatening to bury the bold surf-rider in its watery ruin.”

—until Kalakaua and Daggett published “Kelea, The Surf-Rider of Maui” in 1888, and then both 

 became the most prevalent terms. But again, the descriptions in this period are not always clear whether the surfriders are in fact standing on the surfboard. (On a side note, the earliest usage of 

 appears in the diary of Ebenezer Townsend, who landed in the Hawaiian Islands aboard a sealing ship in August 1798: “They sometimes make use of surf-boards,” wrote Townsend. “The surf-board is about their own length and floats them lighter.”) 

 is still used today in such names as the Surfrider Foundation and Matt Warshaw’s 

Surfriders: In Search of the Perfect Wave

The surfboard itself, in early descriptions of the sport, was often not named but rather compared to another object. Captain Charles Clerke, who took over the 

 after the death of Captain Cook, noted in a journal entry from January 1778, that Hawaiian natives "have another convenience for conveying themselves upon the Water, which we never met with before; this is by means of a thin piece of Board about 2 feet broad & 6 or 8 long, exactly in the shape of one of our bone paper cutters; upon this they get astride [and] paddle with their hands." Midshipman George Gilbert, around the same time, noted that the boards resembled "a piece of wood nearly in the form of an oar." Four years later, seeking to give this unique craft a unique name, ship's surgeon William Ellis described the floating craft as "very light flat pieces of boards, which we call sharkboards."

 appears in the late 19th century as a general description for riding waves in a canoe. The term also appeared in a 

 article (December 8, 1905) as a translation for the Hawaiian 

. The article talked about a small surfboard thought to be nearly 300 years old and belonging to a Hawaiian chiefess named Kaneamuna was found in a cave at Hoʻokena, Hawaiʻi.

 appears only in the 20th century and—when the term is used by itself—describes one who stands on a surfboard. Other positions on a board today either have different names (

Alexander Hume Ford appears to be the first to use the term 

 in a letter requesting support for the proposed Outrigger Canoe Club (letter dated April 7, 1908): “The main object of the club being to give an added and permanent attraction to Hawaii and make Waikiki always the Home of the Surfer, with perhaps an annual Surfboard and Outrigger Canoe Carnival which will do much to spread abroad the attractions of Hawaii, the only islands in the world where men and boys ride upright upon the crests of the waves.” The association of “Surfer” with riding “upright on the crests of the waves” established the term as one used exclusively for those who stand on surfboards. In a 1908 article titled "Aquatic Sports," written for 

) and the names became commonly interchangeable through the 1950s. In his 

 in a 1954 article to describe what we would call 

 have been the dominant terms since the 1960s.

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS: WE SHOULD HAVE STUCK WITH “SHARKBOARDS”!

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