What does Noa mean in Hawaiian?
Noa is a Hawaiian boy name that means freedom, free from restriction. The name comes from noa (free from kapu). It is pronounced NOH-ah, with 2 syllables. The stressed syllable is written in capitals.
Noa belongs with other Hawaiian names about freedom.
Noa, and the end of the kapu
Noa is one half of a pair that organised traditional Hawaiian life. Kapu is what is restricted, sacred, set apart; noa is what is free of that restriction — released, common, permitted. A thing made noa has been freed for ordinary use.
In 1819 Kamehameha II ate at the same table as the women of the court, deliberately breaking the eating kapu. The act is remembered as ʻai noa, the free eating, and it ended the formal kapu system.
Noa is also frequently searched by people looking for Noah in Hawaiian, which is a different name: Noa is a Hawaiian word in its own right, while the biblical Noah was written Noa in Hawaiian-language Bibles as well. Both readings are in use.
The words inside Noa
noa means free, released from kapu and appears in 3 Hawaiian names, among them Kainoa, Kanoa.
Noah in Hawaiian
Noa is the Hawaiian form of Noah, the English name respelled with Hawaiian sounds. It is not a translation of what Noah means, but it has been used by Hawaiian families since the 1800s. The page on Noah in Hawaiian traces which letters changed and why.
How to pronounce Noa
Say every vowel. The vowels in Noa are o as in “go”, a as in “father”. See the full Hawaiian pronunciation guide.
Is Noa a boy or girl name?
Noa is used mainly as a boy's name, though Hawaiian itself has no grammatical gender.
How often Noa is given in the U.S.
Social Security records show 11,160 U.S. babies named Noa since 1970, but that spelling is mostly the Hebrew girl's name, so the count says little about the Hawaiian name. In Hawaiʻi itself, 253 babies born in the state were named Noa from 1981 to 2021, with a peak of 14 in 2001. 69 were born there from 2012 to 2021.
How well recorded is Noa?
Noa has its own entry among Wiktionary’s documented Hawaiian given names.