Hawaiian Boy Names with Meanings

How popular are Hawaiian boy names?

Kai is the Hawaiian boy name that broke through first. It has been a top-100 American boy name for several years, helped by the fact that it also exists in Japanese, Māori, Welsh, and Scandinavian naming, so parents from many backgrounds meet it and like it. Koa, Noa, and Keanu have all entered the national top 1,000 since 2015, Koa fastest of all, and Kalani and Makoa have followed. Noa has the same crossover appeal as Kai, since it is also a Hebrew and a Japanese name.

In Hawaiʻi, boys are more likely than girls to carry a Hawaiian name as a first name, and the pool is wider. Kekoa, Ikaika, Kainoa, Keoni, Kimo, Kāwika, Kalani, and Keola are all everyday names in the islands, and the biblical forms such as Keoni (John) and Kimo (James) are as common as the nature names. Many families also give a boy a long ancestral name as a middle name, which is why names like Kalanianaʻole and Kekūhaupiʻo survive in daily use.

What makes a Hawaiian boy name

Hawaiian names have no grammatical gender, and until the twentieth century most were given to any child. The names that read as masculine today share a few elements.

Ka and ke both mean the, and the choice between them follows a sound rule. Ke goes before words that start with k, e, a, or o, which is why it is Keanu and Keola but Kanoa and Kapono. Because the pieces are ordinary words, a Hawaiian boy name is a short phrase anyone can read once they know the vocabulary, and the finder above lets you search by those meanings directly.

Royal and legendary names

The names of Hawaiian aliʻi, the chiefs and monarchs, are used with care in the islands, but they remain the deepest source of boy names. Kamehameha, the lonely one, united the islands in 1810. His son Liholiho, whose name means glowing, became Kamehameha II. Kalākaua, the day of battle, was the last king, and his heir Kūhiō served in the United States Congress for nearly twenty years. Piʻilani ruled Maui in the sixteenth century, Kahekili was its last independent king, and ʻUmi-a-Līloa is remembered as the great commoner-king of Hawaiʻi Island.

From tradition come Māui, the demigod who snared the sun from the top of Haleakalā, Kāne, the god of creation and fresh water, Kū, the god of war and governance, Lono, the god of rain and agriculture, and Kanaloa, the god of the ocean. Māui is now an ordinary given name across the Pacific. The others are rarely given to children in Hawaiʻi because of the weight they carry. Browse royal names and names from Hawaiian mythology to see them all.

Hawaiian naming customs

A traditional Hawaiian name was believed to carry mana and to shape the child who bore it. The way a name came to the family was recorded along with the name. Mary Kawena Pukui described the main kinds in Nānā i ke Kumu, and the terms are still in use.

• Inoa pō, a name that came to a relative in a dream before the birth. It was thought dangerous to ignore, and a child who fell ill might be renamed with the dream name to cure him.
• Inoa hoʻomanaʻo, a commemorative name marking an event around the birth. Kalākaua, the day of battle, is this kind of name, recording a battle fought by his family in the year he was born.
• Inoa kūamuamu, a deliberately unpleasant name given to protect a child from spirits, often after an earlier child had died. Such names were usually exchanged later.
• Inoa kupuna, an ancestral name handed down within a family. Chiefly names were kapu and could not be used by others.

An 1860 law of the kingdom required every child to carry a Christian first name and to take the father’s given name as a surname. The result is that most Hawaiian family names today, Kealoha, Kahananui, Kekoa, Kahale, are old boys’ given names frozen in place. The rule was repealed in 1967 and Hawaiian first names have come back strongly since, with the ʻokina and kahakō now accepted on state birth certificates.

How to pronounce Hawaiian boy names

Every vowel is spoken, there are no silent letters, and stress falls on the second-to-last syllable unless a final diphthong or long vowel pulls it to the end. That is why Kai is one syllable and Kekai is keh-KYE with the stress at the end.

• Vowels are pure. A as in father, e as in bet, i as ee, o as in go, u as oo.
• Ai sounds like eye, au like ow, ei like ay. Kai is kye, Māui is MOW-ee.
• The ʻokina is a brief pause. Kealiʻi is keh-ah-LEE-ee.
• A kahakō lengthens the vowel. Kāwika is kah-VEE-kah, Manō is mah-NOH.
• W after i or e sounds like v. Kāwika, Iwalani.

Each name page marks the stressed syllable for you. The pronunciation guide covers the rules in more depth.

Strong Hawaiian boy names

Strength is the theme parents ask for most. Ikaika is strength itself. Koa and Kekoa are bravery and the warrior. Makoa is fearless. Kaimana is the power of the sea and also the Hawaiian word for diamond. Lanakila is victory, Kūpaʻa is steadfast, Kilakila is majestic, and Hekili is thunder. Kanaʻi is the conqueror and Nakoa is the warriors. Names of the natural world carry the same feeling with a softer sound. Nalu is the wave, Kainalu the billowing sea, Makani the wind, Keahi the fire, and Pōhaku the rock. See every name meaning strength and warrior name.

Short and long Hawaiian boy names

The shortest Hawaiian boy names are among the most popular. Kai, Koa, Noa, Kimo, Manu (bird), Pono (righteousness), Ola (life), and Kale (Charles) are all one or two syllables. Long names are the traditional style and are easier to say than they look because every syllable is regular. Kalanianaʻole (the royal chief without measure), Kekūhaupiʻo, Kealaikahiki (the pathway to Tahiti), and Kalanimoku (the island chief) are all names still carried in Hawaiʻi today. The syllable filter in the finder sorts the whole list by length.

Choosing a Hawaiian boy name respectfully

Learn the meaning of the whole name, keep the Hawaiian spelling and pronunciation, and leave the names of specific kings and gods to families with a connection to them. Names built from nature and virtue words, Kai, Koa, Keanu, Makoa, Ikaika, Kanoa, are used across the world without any of that weight, and they are the ones most parents are looking for.