What does Kaʻahumanu mean in Hawaiian?
Kaʻahumanu is a Hawaiian girl name that means the feather cloak. The name comes from ka (the) + ʻahu (cloak) + manu (bird). It is pronounced kah-ah-hoo-MAH-noo, with 5 syllables. The stressed syllable is written in capitals.
Queen Kaʻahumanu, favorite wife of Kamehameha I and later regent.
Kaʻahumanu belongs with other Hawaiian names about royalty and bird.
Queen Kaʻahumanu
Kaʻahumanu was the favourite wife of Kamehameha I and, after his death in 1819, the most powerful figure in the kingdom. She created the office of kuhina nui — a co-ruler alongside the king — and held it herself, effectively governing through two reigns.
In 1819 she and Keōpūolani persuaded Kamehameha II to eat at the same table as the women of the court, deliberately breaking the eating kapu. The act, remembered as the ʻai noa, ended the formal kapu system before the first missionaries arrived.
The name means the feather cloak, from ʻahu (cloak) and manu (bird, feather) — the ʻahu ʻula worn by the highest chiefs.
The words inside Kaʻahumanu
ʻahu means cloak, covering and appears in 2 Hawaiian names, among them Poliʻahu.
manu means bird and appears in 2 Hawaiian names, among them Manu.
How to pronounce Kaʻahumanu
Say every vowel. The vowels in Kaʻahumanu are a as in “father”, u as “oo”. The ʻokina (ʻ) in Kaʻahumanu is a short pause, like the break in “uh-oh”. See the full Hawaiian pronunciation guide.
Is Kaʻahumanu a boy or girl name?
Kaʻahumanu is used mainly as a girl's name, though Hawaiian itself has no grammatical gender.
How often Kaʻahumanu is given in the U.S.
No year from 1880 to 2023 saw five or more U.S. babies named Kaʻahumanu, and it never reaches five in the Hawaiʻi records either, so it is rare as a first name.
How well recorded is Kaʻahumanu?
Kaʻahumanu is built from vocabulary recorded in Pukui–Elbert, the standard Hawaiian dictionary, but it has no entry among documented Hawaiian given names.