An uncertain name
Hāna with a long first vowel is not the same word as hana, work — and the meaning of the place name is not settled. Some sources give it as work or craft, others as a bay. Pukui, Elbert and Mookini leave it open, which is the honest position.
The same ambiguity sits underneath Hanalei on Kauaʻi, where the hana element is read as both bay and making.
The road
The Hāna Highway runs about fifty miles from Kahului with something over six hundred curves and fifty-odd one-lane bridges, most of them built in the 1910s. The drive is the reason most visitors come, and the reason Hāna has stayed as small as it has.
The district is one of the most strongly Hawaiian communities on Maui, and residents have asked visitors repeatedly to treat the road as a road people live on rather than an attraction.