What does Kaiāulu mean in Hawaiian?
Kaiāulu is a Hawaiian unisex name that means community, a pleasant trade wind of Waiʻanae. The name comes from kaiāulu (community, a wind name). It is pronounced kye-AH-oo-loo, with 3 syllables. The stressed syllable is written in capitals.
Kaiāulu belongs with other Hawaiian names about wind and love.
Why sources disagree about Kaiāulu
Look Kaiāulu up in three places and you will get two answers. Here is each reading and where it comes from.
- “community, neighbourhood, village”
- “a gentle trade wind at Waiʻanae”
Which one to use. Both are standard and neither is a mistake. As a given name the community sense is usually the one intended; as a word in a mele it is very often the wind.
Kaiāulu in use today
Kaiāulu is one of the Hawaiian words that has stayed in active civic use rather than retreating into the dictionary. The University of Hawaiʻi has run it as a word of the week, Kamehameha Schools uses it for its community programmes, and it turns up in the names of neighbourhood initiatives and housing developments across the islands.
The wind sense belongs to the Waiʻanae coast of Oʻahu. Hawaiian names its winds and rains individually, and Kaiāulu is the cool, steady one that comes ashore there — the wind that turns up in songs as a figure for ease and welcome.
The words inside Kaiāulu
kaiāulu means community.
How to pronounce Kaiāulu
Say every vowel. The vowels in Kaiāulu are a as in “father”, i as “ee”, u as “oo”. A vowel with a line over it (kahakō) is held slightly longer. See the full Hawaiian pronunciation guide.
Is Kaiāulu a boy or girl name?
Kaiāulu is unisex. Hawaiian has no grammatical gender, and most traditional names were given to any child.
How often Kaiāulu is given in the U.S.
No year from 1880 to 2023 saw five or more U.S. babies named Kaiāulu, and it never reaches five in the Hawaiʻi records either, so it is rare as a first name.
How well recorded is Kaiāulu?
Kaiāulu is built from vocabulary recorded in Pukui–Elbert, the standard Hawaiian dictionary, but it has no entry among documented Hawaiian given names.