What does Kapalua mean in Hawaiian?
Kapalua is a Hawaiian girl name that means two borders, arms embracing the sea. The name comes from kapa (border) + lua (two). It is pronounced kah-pah-LOO-ah, with 4 syllables. The stressed syllable is written in capitals.
Kapalua belongs with other Hawaiian names about ocean.
Kapalua on Maui
Kapalua is the resort and residential area on the northwest coast of Maui, in old pineapple-plantation country above a series of sheltered bays. Kapalua Bay is one of the calmest swimming beaches on the island, and the name is usually rendered locally as “arms embracing the sea” — a reading of the two headlands that close around the bay.
The literal parts are plainer: kapa is a border or edge, lua is two. The poetic reading and the literal one describe the same shape from different angles, which is ordinary in Hawaiian place naming.
The words inside Kapalua
kapa means border, edge.
lua means two, second and appears in 3 Hawaiian names, among them Kalua, Kailua.
How to pronounce Kapalua
Say every vowel. The vowels in Kapalua are a as in “father”, u as “oo”. See the full Hawaiian pronunciation guide.
Is Kapalua a boy or girl name?
Kapalua is used mainly as a girl's name, though Hawaiian itself has no grammatical gender.
How often Kapalua is given in the U.S.
No year from 1880 to 2023 saw five or more U.S. babies named Kapalua, and it never reaches five in the Hawaiʻi records either, so it is rare as a first name.
How well recorded is Kapalua?
Kapalua is built from vocabulary recorded in Pukui–Elbert, the standard Hawaiian dictionary, but it has no entry among documented Hawaiian given names.