Kiribati, pronounced Kiribas

[Rossmoyne]

I believe I read in a book years ago that one of the reasons for the anomaly between the spelling and pronunciation of this island was because the young 'administrator' posted to the island found no letter 's' on his typewriter, therefore typed 'ti' instead. There is a huge amount of information and all sorts of other explanations to be had from Google, but nothing about the typewriter story. Is this a complete figment of my imagination or does anyone else remember the "typewriter" version?

[sophiewhitehouse]

Very, very late answer, but my year 11 science teacher, who has in fact visited Kiribati, on multiple occasions, taught us the typewriter story.