What is Noah in Hawaiian?
Noah is Noa in Hawaiian, said NOH-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 Noah became Noa
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 Noah and a vowel was added at the end. A Hawaiian word cannot finish on a consonant, which is where the last vowel comes from.
Noa as a Hawaiian name
Noa is not only a borrowed spelling. It reads as Hawaiian in its own right, meaning “freedom, free from restriction”, 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 Noa
Say it NOH-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.