What is Susan in Hawaiian?
Susan is Kukana in Hawaiian, said koo-KAH-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 Susan became Kukana
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 Susan S became K, 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.
Kukana as a Hawaiian name
Kukana is not only a borrowed spelling. It reads as Hawaiian in its own right, meaning “Susanna”, 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 Kukana
Say it koo-KAH-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.