What does Pualena mean in Hawaiian?
Pualena is a Hawaiian girl name that means yellow flower, golden glow. The name comes from pua (flower) + lena (yellow). It is pronounced poo-ah-LEH-nah, with 4 syllables. The stressed syllable is written in capitals.
Pualena belongs with other Hawaiian names about flower and light.
Why sources disagree about Pualena
Look Pualena up in three places and you will get three answers. Here is each reading and where it comes from.
- “yellow flower”
- “the golden light of dawn”
- “a beloved person”
Which one to use. All three are current. "Yellow flower" is the literal reading and the safest answer; the dawn-light and sweetheart senses are what the song is using.
The song Pualena
Most people meet this name through music. Josh Tatofi recorded "Pualena" in 2019 and the video has been watched more than nine million times, which is why searches for the name spike around the song rather than around the nursery.
In the mele, Pualena is not a botanical description. It is a way of addressing someone held dear, the way English love songs reach for "sunshine". That usage is old: Hawaiian poetry has long used a yellow blossom as a figure for a person of great beauty and standing, and the name carries the compliment with it.
The words inside Pualena
pua means flower, blossom and appears in 10 Hawaiian names, among them Kapua, Pua, Pualani, Puanani.
lena means yellow.
How to pronounce Pualena
Say every vowel. The vowels in Pualena are u as “oo”, a as in “father”, e as in “bet”. See the full Hawaiian pronunciation guide.
Is Pualena a boy or girl name?
Pualena is used mainly as a girl's name, though Hawaiian itself has no grammatical gender.
How often Pualena is given in the U.S.
Social Security records show 19 U.S. babies named Pualena from 2022 to 2023, all girls. It appears every year from 2022 on. Its peak came in 2022, with 10, and 19 were born from 2014 to 2023. In the Hawaiʻi records it never reaches five births of one sex in a year, the level at which a name is listed.
How well recorded is Pualena?
Pualena is built from vocabulary recorded in Pukui–Elbert, the standard Hawaiian dictionary, but it has no entry among documented Hawaiian given names.