What does Manu mean in Hawaiian?
Manu is a Hawaiian unisex name that means bird. The name comes from manu (bird). It is pronounced MAH-noo, with 2 syllables. The stressed syllable is written in capitals.
Manu belongs with other Hawaiian names about bird and nature.
Manu across the Pacific
Manu is a bird, and it is one of the oldest words in the Polynesian family — Māori, Samoan, Tahitian and Tongan all use manu with the same sense, which makes it one of the clearest markers of shared ancestry across the Pacific.
In Hawaiian it extends outward the way bird words often do: manu can describe a person of high standing, and it names the curved end-pieces of a canoe, which rise like wings.
The words inside Manu
manu means bird and appears in 2 Hawaiian names, among them Kaʻahumanu.
How to pronounce Manu
Say every vowel. The vowels in Manu are a as in “father”, u as “oo”. See the full Hawaiian pronunciation guide.
Is Manu a boy or girl name?
Manu is unisex. Hawaiian has no grammatical gender, and most traditional names were given to any child.
How often Manu is given in the U.S.
Social Security records show 663 U.S. babies named Manu since 1972, but that spelling is also a Samoan and Indian name, so the count says little about the Hawaiian name.
How well recorded is Manu?
Manu has its own entry among Wiktionary’s documented Hawaiian given names.