What is Jean in Hawaiian?
Jean is Kini in Hawaiian, said KEE-nee. The same form covers Jane and Jennie, because Hawaiian writes all of these spellings the same way. 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 Jean became Kini
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 Jean J became I, and and a vowel was added at the end. A Hawaiian word cannot finish on a consonant, which is where the last vowel comes from.
Kini as a Hawaiian name
Kini is not only a borrowed spelling. It reads as Hawaiian in its own right, meaning “multitude”, and it is given as a boy'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 Kini
Say it KEE-nee. 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.