Antonia Soriente on Punan and Penan terminology

The language of hunter-gatherers
Latest book on hunter-gatherers that include the Penan of Borneo

This is one of the latest books on nomadic peoples around the world. It tells us that Punan (or Punan Ba) language is only 25% cognate with the Penan. And despite being called 'Punan', the nomad in Kalimantan actually had no common ancestry and culturally differed to the Punan Ba of Sarawak. 

These revelation is found in a chapter on Penan, "11 Hunter-Gatherers of Borneo and Their Language" by an Associate Professor of Indonesian language and literature Dr Antonia Soriente. 

Obviously, Dr Soriente is familiar with Penan and Kenyah. She is involved in a project on the documentation of two Kenyah languages, Uma' Kulit and Oma Lung. Soriente completed her PhD program in Linguistics at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) on the classification of Kenyah languages in 2003.

According to Soriente, in explaining the terminology 'Punan' and 'Penan' as applied to the hunter-gatherers of Borneo,  

'Penan' is traditionally used to refer to nomadic people and their languages in Sarawak and covers many units that are classified into two main groupings, Western Penan and Eastern Penan; the respective languages are considered distinct within the range of mutual intelligibility. Eastern Penan is spoken in the Baram and Limbang District in Sarawak and in one village in Brunei, while Western Penan is spoken in the Belaga, Baram and Bintulu District in Sarawak. This term also applies today to some groups spread in Kalimantan such as the Penan Benalui.

Perhaps, one interesting fact revealed in the book is that there are about 295 Penans, still prefer living nomadically along the Tutoh, Magoh and Adang River in Sarawak today.

Soriente said in Kalimantan related nomadic or formerly nomadic people are generally call Punan.
'Punan' is used today in Kalimantan for people with nomadic hunter-gatherer habits in general but also for the settled Punan Ba, the Punan Aput, the Punan Batu, and Punan Busang, whose languages are allegedly unintelligible to the speakers of other Penan languages (Brosius [1992], e.g., notes that Punan Ba and Punan Aput have only 25% cognate percentage with Penan languages). 

Soriente contends the nomadic and sedentary Punan groups, although having an identical name, do not seem to recognize a common ancestry and differ in many aspects of custom, language, and social organization. For example, she said "the Punan Ba have no tradition of having been nomadic and belong to the Kajang people (see Hudson 1978)". 

Dr Soriente's chapter is specifically about Penan language and its links with the Kenyah language. 

Another recent book of interest to Punan and Penan is the "Anthropogenic Tropical Forest: Elucidates human–nature interactions on a plantation frontier in Malaysian Borneo". It is edited by professor Noboru Ishikawa of Kyoto University and professor Ryoji Soda, Osaka City University.

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