What does Hōkūleʻa mean in Hawaiian?
Hōkūleʻa is a Hawaiian unisex name that means star of gladness, the star Arcturus. The name comes from hōkū (star) + leʻa (joy). It is pronounced hoh-koo-LEH-ah, with 4 syllables. The stressed syllable is written in capitals.
Name of the voyaging canoe that revived Polynesian wayfinding in 1976.
Hōkūleʻa belongs with other Hawaiian names about star, joy and ocean.
The words inside Hōkūleʻa
hōkū means star and appears in 5 Hawaiian names, among them Hōkū, Hōkūlani, Kahōkū, Hōkūao.
leʻa means joy, pleasure, delight and appears in 2 Hawaiian names, among them Kaleʻa.
How to pronounce Hōkūleʻa
Say every vowel. The vowels in Hōkūleʻa are o as in “go”, u as “oo”, e as in “bet”, a as in “father”. The ʻokina (ʻ) in Hōkūleʻa is a short pause, like the break in “uh-oh”. A vowel with a line over it (kahakō) is held slightly longer. See the full Hawaiian pronunciation guide.
Is Hōkūleʻa a boy or girl name?
Hōkūleʻa is unisex. Hawaiian has no grammatical gender, and most traditional names were given to any child.
How often Hōkūleʻa is given in the U.S.
No year from 1880 to 2023 saw five or more U.S. babies named Hōkūleʻa, and it never reaches five in the Hawaiʻi records either, so it is rare as a first name.
How well recorded is Hōkūleʻa?
Hōkūleʻa is built from vocabulary recorded in Pukui–Elbert, the standard Hawaiian dictionary, but it has no entry among documented Hawaiian given names.