Four tools, one dataset. Search 1392 Hawaiian names by meaning or sound, find the Hawaiian form of your own name, watch a name come apart into the words it is made of, and keep the ones you like. Everything below runs on the same checked data, and the page says plainly what that data is.
Tool one
The name finder
Type a name to look it up, or type what you want the name to mean. Searching ocean returns every name whose meaning mentions the sea, not just names spelled with those letters. You can then narrow by gender, by one of 33 meaning groups, by first letter, or by how many syllables you want, and sort by how common the name is, alphabetically, or shortest first.
130 English names have a Hawaiian form that families have actually used since the 1800s, and each one has a page of its own tracing which letters changed and why. Type a name with no recorded form and the tool respells it with Hawaiian sounds instead, using the same rules that turned Robert into Lopaka. It will tell you which of the two you are looking at.
The site has 130 names with a recorded Hawaiian form. Anything else is respelled with Hawaiian sounds.
A respelling is a plausible Hawaiian spelling of your name, not a name anyone has carried, and it is not a translation of what your name means. If the meaning matters more to you than the sound, use the finder above and search for the meaning itself.
Tool three
The name loom
Most Hawaiian names are compounds: Leilani is lei and lani, a garland and the heavens. The loom on the front page takes a name apart into the words it is woven from and puts it back together, then moves on to the next one. Of the 1392 names here, 1390 have that word-by-word breakdown recorded, and you can follow any word to its own page to see every other name built from it.
Every name page has a heart on it. Tap it and the name joins a shortlist you can open from the header on any page, with the meaning and pronunciation kept alongside it so you are not looking things up twice. The shortlist lives in your browser’s own storage. There is no account to make and no sign-in, and the names you save are never sent to this site or anywhere else, which also means they stay on the one device and clearing your browser data clears them.
All four read the same file. These are its actual contents, counted from the data rather than rounded up.
1392
Hawaiian names
656 girl · 300 boy · 436 unisex
89
Words behind them
The elements names are built from
130
English names
With a recorded Hawaiian form
313
Checked against Wiktionary
Attested in its Hawaiian given names list
Where the 1392 names come from, and which ones get a page
532 of them are documented names: recorded in the dictionaries and name lists below, and each has its own page with the meaning, the words inside it, and how to say it. The other 860 are modern combinations of Hawaiian words, the kind of name that is coined rather than inherited. They are searchable in the finder, and each is labelled as a modern combination on its page, but they are deliberately kept out of search engines, because a coined name is not the same kind of fact as a recorded one and it would be misleading to present it as though it were.
Meanings and spellings follow Pukui and Elbert throughout, place names follow Place Names of Hawaii, and pronunciations are written out syllable by syllable with the stressed one in capitals. The pronunciation guide explains the system, including the ʻokina and the kahakō, which change what a word means and are not decoration.
Questions people ask
Is this a Hawaiian name generator?⌄
Not in the usual sense. A generator invents names that sound Hawaiian. These tools only show you names that exist: 1392 of them, each with a meaning taken from the dictionary. The one thing the site will produce for you is a sound-based respelling of your own name, and it says so when it does that rather than passing it off as a traditional name.
What is my Hawaiian name?⌄
Type it into the translator on this page. If it is one of the 130 names with a recorded Hawaiian form, such as Mary (Malia), John (Keoni), or David (Kāwika), you will get that form along with a page explaining how the letters changed. Otherwise you will get your name respelled with Hawaiian sounds, which is a plausible spelling rather than a name anyone has been given.
Can I search Hawaiian names by meaning instead of by name?⌄
Yes, and that is what the finder is built for. Typing a word like ocean, light, or strength searches the meanings rather than the spellings, so you get every name that means it. There are also 33 ready-made meaning groups if you would rather browse than type.
Is there a full list I can read through instead of searching?⌄
Yes. The A to Z has every name in one place, the words glossary lists the elements names are built from with every name that uses each one, and there are separate lists for girl, boy, and unisex names.
Do I need an account to save names?⌄
No. The shortlist is kept by your own browser, so there is nothing to sign up for and nothing is sent to the site. The trade-off is that it is tied to that one browser on that one device, and clearing your browsing data will clear the shortlist with it.