What does Waimea mean in Hawaiian?
Waimea is a Hawaiian unisex name that means reddish water. The name comes from wai (water) + mea (reddish). It is pronounced wye-MEH-ah, with 3 syllables. The stressed syllable is written in capitals.
Waimea belongs with other Hawaiian names about water and earth.
The words inside Waimea
wai means fresh water and appears in 9 Hawaiian names, among them Wailani, Kawai, Kawailani, Waiola.
mea means thing, person, one who and appears in 4 Hawaiian names, among them Kamea, Haumea, Kameāloha.
Waimea as a place name
Waimea is also a town on Kauaʻi and Hawaiʻi, where the name is read as reddish water, for the red soil in its rivers. Place names and given names draw on the same words, so the meanings usually overlap but are not always identical. The page on what Waimea means has the full story, and Hawaiian town and beach names covers the rest.
How to pronounce Waimea
Say every vowel. The vowels in Waimea are a as in “father”, i as “ee”, e as in “bet”. See the full Hawaiian pronunciation guide.
Is Waimea a boy or girl name?
Waimea is unisex. Hawaiian has no grammatical gender, and most traditional names were given to any child.
How often Waimea is given in the U.S.
No year from 1880 to 2023 saw five or more U.S. babies named Waimea, and it never reaches five in the Hawaiʻi records either, so it is rare as a first name.
How well recorded is Waimea?
Waimea is built from vocabulary recorded in Pukui–Elbert, the standard Hawaiian dictionary, but it has no entry among documented Hawaiian given names.