Thank you gentlemen. Let me explain why I asked.
The question arose out of my suspicion that some folklore had crept into our understanding of the island's history. In the literature about Gardner Island/Nikumaroro, there are references to "Karaka" and the notion has grown up within TIGHAR that this was the local Gilbertese rendering of Gallagher and that, after his death, the island's village was named Karaka in his honor. The problem is, "Karaka" is not a transliteration of how Gallagher pronounced his name.
We know how Gerald Gallagher pronounced his own name. When I interviewed his friend and fellow Colonial Service officer Eric Bevington in 1991, I pronounced Gallagher the way we say the name in this country - Gallager (with a hard second G). Eric quickly corrected me. It's Gallaher (silent G). He also explained that Gerald was "as English as I am" and that his nickname "Irish" was a good-natured pejorative. Gerald's ancestors, however, were indeed Irish and the family's pronunciation of the name as "Gallaher" was probably an echo of the original Gaelic "Ó Gallchobhair." Anglicization resulted in "Gallagher "which, as you have confirmed, English speakers often pronounce "Gallager." My own family name, "Ghilleaspuig" in Scots Gaelic, suffered a similar fate. It was anglicized to Gillespy and finally to Gillespie. Such was the price of uniting the kingdoms.
There is no "G" in the Gilbertese language. English words with a hard "G" are transliterated with a "K" replacing the "G." Hence, "Gilberts" becomes "Kiribati" (with the "ti" pronounced like "s" - so "Gilberts" becomes "Kiribas.") No Gilbertese who knew Gerald Gallagher personally would render his name as "Karaka." The only non-
European person we've ever talked to who was on Gardner Island when Gallagher was there, told us that he was known as "Kela," which is, at least, a reasonable transliteration of "Gallaher." (Incidentally, Gallagher always referred to the island as Gardner.) So where did "Karaka" come from?
The village was never named or re-named "Karaka." On the map created from the 1938/39 New Zealand Survey, the Gilberetese work camp is labeled "Keresoma." Other than that, as far as we can tell, the village had no name distinct from the name of the island.
The first reference to Gallagher as "Karaka" appears in District Officer Paul Laxton's article "Nikumaroro" (Journal of the Polynesian Society, Sept. 1951) in which Laxton describes a maneaba (meeting house) that was built and named Uen Maungan I Karaka (Flower to the Memory of Gallagher or The Flowering of Gallagher's Achievement). A 1954 map of the island drawn by District Officer Freegard designates the plot of land we call the Seven Site as "Karaka."
It would appear that the transliteration of Gallagher's name as "Karaka" was the invention of a later English District Officer (probably Laxton) who never knew "Irish" personally.