What does Moana mean in Hawaiian?
Moana is a Hawaiian unisex name that means ocean, the open sea. The name comes from moana (ocean). It is pronounced moh-AH-nah, with 3 syllables. The stressed syllable is written in capitals.
Moana belongs with other Hawaiian names about ocean and water.
Moana, the word and the film
Moana is the open ocean — not the shoreline or the nearshore water, which is kai, but the deep sea beyond the reef. The distinction matters in a language built by voyagers: kai is the water you fish and swim in, moana is the water you cross.
Disney's Moana (2016) put the name in front of an enormous audience, and it is the reason most people look it up. The word is shared across Polynesian languages — Māori, Samoan, Tahitian and Tongan all use moana for the ocean — so the name reads as Polynesian rather than specifically Hawaiian.
The words inside Moana
moana means ocean, open sea and appears in 2 Hawaiian names, among them Kamoana.
How to pronounce Moana
Say every vowel. The vowels in Moana are o as in “go”, a as in “father”. See the full Hawaiian pronunciation guide.
Is Moana a boy or girl name?
Moana is listed here as unisex. Of the 1,059 U.S. babies given it, 100% were girls and 0% boys.
How often Moana is given in the U.S.
Social Security records show 1,059 U.S. babies named Moana from 1941 to 2023, all girls. It appears in 66 of those 83 years. Its peak was 2017, with 141. The 2014 to 2023 total of 550 is more than in all earlier years combined. In Hawaiʻi itself, 85 babies born in the state were named Moana from 1956 to 2021, with a peak of 10 in 2017. 31 were born there from 2012 to 2021. It is listed here as unisex, but every recorded U.S. birth has been a girl.
How well recorded is Moana?
Moana has its own entry among Wiktionary’s documented Hawaiian given names.