Many people both children and adults have Hawaiian names, but they are usually not given as a first name, but as a middle name. I grew up in Hawaii always knowing and accepting that people had Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, and other ethnic names as a middle name. It was common practice to pass on a grandparent's name as a middle name for a child, I have my grandmother's Chinese name. What I did not know was that what I took for granted as a Hawaii custom, actually started out as a Hawaiian law!
Old Hawaiians coined a new name for each child, with careful thought of its meaning. Children could be named after relatives, but names were not copied from other families. Surnames did not exist. In 1860 Kamehameha IV signed the Act to Regulate Names. Hawaiians were to take their father's given name as a surname, and all children born henceforth were to receive a Christian, i.e. English, given name. Hawaiian names were transferred into middle names. The law was not repealed until 1967
Today you do not have to be Hawaiian to have a Hawaiian name. People who live in Hawaii, or live elsewhere but love Hawaii give Hawaiian names to their children as first or middle names. People also legally change their name to a Hawaiian name or insist on being called by a Hawaiian nick name.
Some Hawaiian people feel that you should only have a Hawaiian name if all or part of your ethnicity is Hawaiian, but I feel that if you choose a Hawaiian name with love and respect for the Hawaiian culture and Hawaii that it is okay because you are doing it for the right reasons.
In a small survey of 3,750 people, the current most popular Hawaiian names are:
Top Female Hawaiian Names
Leilani
Malia
Noelani
Mahealani
Ku'uipo
Alana
Keikilani
Top Male Hawaiian Names
Kalani
Kai
Kekoa
Kainoa
Ikaika
Kaimana
Keoni
Makana
Nainoa
All of this information was obtained from Wikipedia, which I felt provided the best information on this subject. For more information and a longer list of popular Hawaiian names with their Hawaiian meaning, visit their page titled Hawaiian Name.
Also see yesterday's related post Most Popular Baby Names in Hawaii are not Hawaiian.
That's a lovely list of names.
There is a college football player who plays for my alma mater (NCSU) whose name is Kalani. He was born in Hawaii. There was once a little snippet in the local (North Carolina) newspaper about his name, how he got it, how to pronounce it, and what it means. You'd never see an article like that in Hawaii.
Posted by: Sheila | July 11, 2007 at 03:10 AM
That's for sure! Our rival high school in Honolulu where I grew up, was Kalani High School.
Posted by: HawaiiVacationGifts | July 21, 2007 at 07:11 AM