What is Raymond in Hawaiian?
Raymond is Leimana in Hawaiian, said lay-MAH-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 Raymond became Leimana
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 Raymond D fell away, R became L, Y 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.
Leimana as a Hawaiian name
Leimana is not only a borrowed spelling. It reads as Hawaiian in its own right, meaning “powerful lei, lei of spiritual power”, and it is given as a unisex 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 Leimana
Say it lay-MAH-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 pronunciation guide covers the whole system.