[pol-uh-nee-zhuh, -shuh] 
| one of the three principal divisions of Oceania, comprising those island groups in the Pacific lying E of Melanesia and Micronesia and extending from the Hawaiian Islands S to New Zealand. |
| Pol·y·ne·sia (pŏl'ə-nē'zhə, -shə) A division of Oceania including scattered islands of the central and southern Pacific Ocean roughly between New Zealand, Hawaii, and Easter Island. The larger islands are volcanic, the smaller ones generally coral formations. |
Group of islands in the central and southern Pacific Ocean, including the islands of the state of Hawaii and the islands of French Polynesia. Tahiti and Samoa are in Polynesia, which means “many islands.”
Polynesia
the beliefs and practices of the indigenous peoples of the ethnogeographic group of Pacific Islands known as Polynesia (from Greek poly 'many' and nesoi 'islands'). Polynesia encompasses a huge triangular area of the east-central Pacific Ocean. The triangle has its apex at the Hawaiian Islands in the north and its base angles at New Zealand (Aotearoa) in the west and Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in the east. It also includes (from northwest to southeast) Tuvalu, Tokelau, Wallis and Futuna, Samoa (formerly Western Samoa), American Samoa, Tonga, Niue, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia (Tahiti and the other Society Islands, the Marquesas Islands, the Austral Islands, and the Tuamotu Archipelago, including the Gambier Islands [formerly the Mangareva Islands]), and Pitcairn Island. At the turn of the 21st century, about 70 percent of the total population of Polynesia resided in Hawaii
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