What does hapa mean in Hawaiian?
Hapa means part, portion or fragment. It is one of the earliest English loanwords in Hawaiian, taken from the word half in the early 1800s, and it soon came to mean any part or fraction rather than exactly half. Applied to people it means of mixed ancestry: hapa haole is part white, and the Hawaiian Dictionary of Pukui and Elbert gives it as a person of mixed blood.
In Hawaiʻi the word has long described people who are part Native Hawaiian. From the late twentieth century it spread on the U.S. mainland as a name that multiracial Asian Americans chose for themselves, partly because, unlike many words for mixed people, it carried no insult.
That wider use is disputed. Some Native Hawaiians see it as a word taken from their own mixed-race community by people with no tie to Hawaiʻi, and ask that it be kept for people of Native Hawaiian descent. Others, including many who use it, see it as a word that has simply grown. NPR's Code Switch covered both positions in 2016. There is no single ruling, but using it knowing the history is the respectful course.
Hapa is not used in traditional Hawaiian given names.
Say it HAH-pah. Every vowel is pronounced, and the capitalized syllable takes the stress. The pronunciation guide covers the rules.