What is Dorothy in Hawaiian?
Dorothy is Kolokea in Hawaiian, said koh-loh-KEH-ah. This is a recorded form rather than an invented one: it is how the name was written in Hawaiian-language newspapers, church records, and family Bibles from the 1800s onward.
How Dorothy became Kolokea
When the first Hawaiian alphabet was printed in 1826 it was fixed at thirteen letters, the five vowels and h, k, l, m, n, p, w, plus the ʻokina. Every foreign name had to be written with those letters and no others, so Hawaiians wrote what they heard, swapping each missing sound for the nearest one the language had.
In Dorothy D became K, R became L, T became K, Y fell away, and a vowel was slipped between the consonants that ran together. Hawaiian does not run two consonants together, and every syllable ends on a vowel.
Kolokea as a Hawaiian name
Kolokea is not only a borrowed spelling. It reads as Hawaiian in its own right, meaning “to creep, white”, and it is given as a girl's name in Hawaiʻi today. Its own page has the full meaning, the word it is built from, and names that go with it.
How to say Kolokea
Say it koh-loh-KEH-ah. Hawaiian vowels never change value: a is “ah”, e is “eh”, i is “ee”, o is “oh”, u is “oo”. Every vowel is sounded, so there are as many syllables as there are vowels or vowel pairs. The pronunciation guide covers the whole system.