Hana Vave is the name of the northernmost bay

Bay

A bay is an area of water mostly surrounded by land. Bays generally have calmer waters than the surrounding sea, due to the surrounding land blocking some waves and often reducing winds. Bays also exist as an inlet in a lake or pond. A large bay may be called a gulf, a sea, a sound, or a bight...

 on the west coast of Fatu Hiva

Fatu Hiva

Fatu Hiva is the southernmost of the Marquesas Islands, in French Polynesia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean...

. The bay is sometimes called the Bay of Virgins, a translation of the French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 name Baie des Vierges.

The French name originally given to the bay was Baie des Verges (Bay of Penes), because of the phallus

Phallus

A phallus is an erect penis, a penis-shaped object such as a dildo, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. Any object that symbolically resembles a penis may also be referred to as a phallus; however, such objects are more often referred to as being phallic...

-shaped basalt

Basalt

Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...

spires that rise on either side of its entrance.

Hana Vave is also the name of a small village located at the head of the bay, which in 2002, had a population of 337.