What does Lahaina mean in Hawaiian?
Lahaina is a Hawaiian unisex name that means cruel sun, the old royal capital on Maui. The name comes from lā (sun) + hainā (cruel). It is pronounced lah-HYE-nah, with 3 syllables. The stressed syllable is written in capitals.
Lahaina belongs with other Hawaiian names about sun and earth.
The words inside Lahaina
lā means sun, day and appears in 6 Hawaiian names, among them Kala, Haleakalā, Kalāhiki, Kalākaua.
hainā means cruel, merciless.
Lahaina as a place name
Lahaina is also a town on Maui, where the name is read as cruel sun, for the heat of the dry west side. Place names and given names draw on the same words, so the meanings usually overlap but are not always identical. The page on what Lahaina means has the full story, and Hawaiian town and beach names covers the rest.
How to pronounce Lahaina
Say every vowel. The vowels in Lahaina are a as in “father”, i as “ee”. See the full Hawaiian pronunciation guide.
Is Lahaina a boy or girl name?
Lahaina is unisex. Hawaiian has no grammatical gender, and most traditional names were given to any child.
How often Lahaina is given in the U.S.
No year from 1880 to 2023 saw five or more U.S. babies named Lahaina, and it never reaches five in the Hawaiʻi records either, so it is rare as a first name.
How well recorded is Lahaina?
Lahaina is built from vocabulary recorded in Pukui–Elbert, the standard Hawaiian dictionary, but it has no entry among documented Hawaiian given names.