What does Kekai mean in Hawaiian?
Kekai is a Hawaiian unisex name that means the sea. The name comes from ke (the) + kai (sea). It is pronounced keh-KYE, with 2 syllables. The stressed syllable is written in capitals.
Kekai belongs with other Hawaiian names about ocean and water.
Why ke and not ka
Kekai is ke (the) and kai (sea). Hawaiian has two forms of the word the, and the choice follows a rule: ke is used before words that begin with k, e, a or o, and ka before the rest. Kai begins with k, so the sea is ke kai, and the name is Kekai rather than Kakai.
Kai is the sea, salt water and the open ocean, as opposed to wai, fresh water. It appears in more Hawaiian names than almost any other word except lani, and Kekai is the plainest of them: simply the sea.
The words inside Kekai
kai means sea, seawater and appears in 12 Hawaiian names, among them Kai, Kailani, Kaimana, ʻAukai.
How to pronounce Kekai
Say every vowel. The vowels in Kekai are e as in “bet”, a as in “father”, i as “ee”. See the full Hawaiian pronunciation guide.
Is Kekai a boy or girl name?
Kekai is listed here as unisex. Of the 84 U.S. babies given it, 0% were girls and 100% boys.
How often Kekai is given in the U.S.
Social Security records show 84 U.S. babies named Kekai from 1987 to 2023, all boys. It appears in 13 of those 37 years. Its peak was 2005, with 14. The 2014 to 2023 total of 21 is fewer than in all earlier years combined. In Hawaiʻi itself, 48 babies born in the state were named Kekai from 1987 to 2021, with a peak of 9 in 2005. No year after 2010 reached five births of one sex there. It is listed here as unisex, but every recorded U.S. birth has been a boy.
How well recorded is Kekai?
Kekai is built from vocabulary recorded in Pukui–Elbert, the standard Hawaiian dictionary, but it has no entry among documented Hawaiian given names.