Hawaiian Name Generator

How the Hawaiian Name Generator works

How the Hawaiian name generator works

Hawaiian uses thirteen letters, the five vowels and h, k, l, m, n, p, w, plus the ʻokina glottal stop and the kahakō long-vowel mark, so every name is open syllables and vowels, and every name means something. Lani is sky or heaven, so Leilani is heavenly garland, Kalani the sky, Noelani heavenly mist, Kailani sea and sky, Nalani the heavens. Kai is sea, Koa is warrior and the tree, Ikaika strong, Makoa bold, Kekoa the brave one, Keola the life, Kapono the righteous, Kaimana diamond or power of the sea, Nainoa, Makana gift, Mahina moon, Moana ocean, Nohea lovely, Pua flower, Lehua the red ʻōhiʻa blossom, Maile the vine of the lei, Momi pearl, Ipo sweetheart. Many names are unisex in principle and gendered only by custom, and the generator's lists follow the custom. Biblical and English names came in with the missionaries and were Hawaiianised by the sound rules, so John is Keoni, James is Kimo, David is Kawika, Robert is Lopaka, Stephen is Kepano, Anthony is Akoni, Isaiah is Ikaia, and Keanu, the cool breeze, is a real given name that a film star has made the best-known one. Traditional inoa were long and specific, given by a family elder or received in a dream, inoa pō, and could commemorate an event, an ancestor, a chief or a natural sign at the birth; Kamakawiwoʻole, the fearless eye, and Kaʻahumanu are of that kind, and the Traditional option builds long names by joining a root to a prefix like Ka, the, Ke, or Kekai, the sea, and a suffix like lani, nui great, or makani wind.

Modern Hawaii names by a local pattern that has nothing quite like it elsewhere: an English first name, a Hawaiian middle name that is the one the family cares about, and a surname from whichever of the plantation-era peoples the father descends from, so Jason Kalani Souza, Kristen Leilani Tanaka, Bryson Kekoa Wong. The surnames of the islands are Hawaiian, Kahananui, Kealoha, Kahale, Akana, Kamaka, Portuguese from the Madeiran and Azorean sugar workers, Souza, Medeiros, Fernandez, Cabral, Silva, Santos, Japanese, Tanaka, Yamamoto, Nakamura, Fukumoto, Okinawan Higa and Oshiro, Chinese, Wong, Chun, Ching, Lee, Young, and Korean and Filipino, all in a population where most families are several of these at once. The Local mixed option produces that form. Hawaiian surnames are mostly a nineteenth-century development, when an 1860 law required a fixed family name, and many are a father's given name frozen, so Kealoha, the love, and Kalani, the sky, are both first names and surnames.

The ʻokina and kahakō are kept where a name has them, Kaʻai, Hōkū, Kāne, because Kane and Kāne are different words; drop them if a system cannot take them, as many Hawaiian families have had to. For the Polynesian cousins, the Maori page; for the settler names that sit alongside, the American page.

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