Kamana

What does Kamana mean in Hawaiian?

Kamana is a Hawaiian boy name that means the spiritual power. The name comes from ka (the) + mana (spiritual power). It is pronounced kah-MAH-nah, with 3 syllables. The stressed syllable is written in capitals.

Kamana belongs with other Hawaiian names about strength.

Why sources disagree about Kamana

Look Kamana up in three places and you will get two answers. Here is each reading and where it comes from.

“the spiritual power”

Reading ka (the) with mana (spiritual power)The transparent compound reading, and the sense intended when the name is given.

“carpenter”

Kamanā, a nineteenth-century borrowing of the English wordWritten with a kahakō on the final a. Unrelated to mana; it is English "carpenter" respelled.

Which one to use. Kamana is thinly attested as a traditional given name. The compound reading "the spiritual power" is sound, but if you are researching the name you should know that the dictionary entry closest to this spelling is kamanā, carpenter, and that many searches for "kamana" are actually reaching for Kaimana.

Kamana, Kaimana, or Kamanā?

Three similar-looking words that mean quite different things. Kamana reads as ka mana, the spiritual power. Kaimana is diamond — the Hawaiian respelling of the English word, and also the name of Kaimana Beach in Waikīkī; it is the more commonly given name of the three and is often what people mean when they type kamana. Kamanā, with the long final vowel, is a carpenter, borrowed from English in the 1800s.

Mana itself is the one to understand: spiritual power, authority, the force a person or object carries. It is among the most important words in the language and it appears in many names.

The words inside Kamana

mana means spiritual power, authority and appears in 3 Hawaiian names, among them Kaimana, Mana.

How to pronounce Kamana

Say every vowel. The vowels in Kamana are a as in “father”. See the full Hawaiian pronunciation guide.

Is Kamana a boy or girl name?

Kamana is used mainly as a boy's name, though Hawaiian itself has no grammatical gender.

How often Kamana is given in the U.S.

No year from 1880 to 2023 saw five or more U.S. babies named Kamana, and it never reaches five in the Hawaiʻi records either, so it is rare as a first name.

How well recorded is Kamana?

Kamana is built from vocabulary recorded in Pukui–Elbert, the standard Hawaiian dictionary, but it has no entry among documented Hawaiian given names.