What is Ellen in Hawaiian?
Ellen is ʻElena in Hawaiian, said eh-LEH-nah. 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 Ellen became ʻElena
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 Ellen the doubled consonant was written once, a vowel was slipped between the consonants that ran together, and and a vowel was added at the end. Hawaiian never writes a consonant twice, so the pair collapses to one. Hawaiian does not run two consonants together, and every syllable ends on a vowel. A Hawaiian word cannot finish on a consonant, which is where the last vowel comes from. The ʻokina at the front is a consonant in Hawaiian, the catch in the voice before the first vowel.
ʻElena has a page of its own as a Hawaiian given name, with its popularity and the names it is usually paired with.
How to say ʻElena
Say it eh-LEH-nah. 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 ʻokina (ʻ) is a catch in the voice, the break in the middle of “uh-oh”. The pronunciation guide covers the whole system.