Place Names of Hawaii: Revised and Expanded Edition 9780824842109

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PLACE NAMES OF HAWAII

Place Names of Hawaii Mary Kawena Pukui Samuel H. Elbert Esther T. Mookini

REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION

University of Hawaii Press Honolulu

Copyright © 1974 by The University Press of Hawaii First edition copyright 1966 by University of Hawaii Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Second edition 1974 Paperback edition 1976 20

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 73-85582 ISBN 978-0-8248-0524-1 Book design by Roger Eggers

University of Hawai'i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources

Ua hala na kupuna, a he 'ike koli'uli'u wale no kd keia la, i na mea i ke au i hope lilo, id kikilo. The ancestors have passed on; today's people see but dimly times long gone and far behind.

CONTENtS Preface

ix

Acknowledgments

xv

Maps

xvii

Glossary

1

Hawaiian words used in the Glossary

3

Abbreviations used in the Glossary

4

Glossary

5

Appendix

235

1. Previous studies of place names

235

2. Sources consulted

237

3. Sound changes and the need for salvage

238

4. New names

241

5. Structural analysis

243

6. Semantic analysis

253

7. Words of non-Hawaiian origin and names of streets and buildings

263

8. Connotative values of place names

266

9. Names found elsewhere in Polynesia

277

10. Representation of the lexicon and the grammar in the place names

280

References

281

PREFACE In this book the authors endeavor to provide the people of the State of Hawai'i with a glossary of important place names in the State, including names of valleys, streams, mountains, land sections, surfing areas, towns, villages, and Honolulu streets and buildings. The first edition of Place Names of Hawaii contained only 1,125 entries. The coverage is expanded in the present edition to include about 4,000 entries, including names in English. Individual entries have been lengthened, especially for important places or those rich in legendary or historical associations, for example, io-lani, Ka-huku, Ka-lihi, Ka-wai-a-Ha'o, Moana-lua, and La Perouse. As in the earlier volume, meanings of the Hawaiian names are given when possible, as well as background information and, in some instances, references that may be consulted for verification and further information. Approximately 800 more names are included in this volume than appear in the Atlas of Hawaii (see References). The difference is due to the inclusion here of names of surfing areas, streets, and buildings, and of rocks and spots for which legends exist. The names in the Glossary are arranged in alphabetical order and, except for well-known towns, are located by quadrangles on Hawai'i, Maui, Moloka'i, and O'ahu, and by districts on Kaua'i. The quadrangles and districts are shown on maps 2, 3, 4, and 5. Honolulu streets are located by sections of the city (map 6). Following the Glossary is an Appendix containing an analysis of the place names. A major endeavor of the compilers has been to record the pronunciation of the place names as spoken by elderly Hawaiians who are fluent in the language. For this purpose the traditional orthography has serious limitations. For example, 'Alae (as in Wai-'alae) and 'Ala-'e (a place on the Kona coast of Hawai'i) are both commonly written Alae, but one is the word for a mud-

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Preface hen and the other, for a sweet smell. It is easy, however, to indicate the approximate pronunciation used by knowledgeable Hawaiians if three modifications are made in the traditional spelling: a reversed apostrophe for the glottal stop, a macron over vowels that are long and stressed regardless of position in the word, and hyphens or spaces (as in Ka-lihi Uka) separating individual words that make up many of the names. How many place names are there or were there in the Hawaiian Islands? Even a rough estimate is impossible: a hundred thousand? a million? Hawaiians named taro patches, rocks and trees that represented deities and ancestors, sites of houses and heiau (places of worship), canoe landings, fishing stations in the sea, resting places in the forests, and the tiniest spots where miraculous or interesting events are believed to have taken place. And an important element—one virtually unknown in Euro-American culture—that added zest to the use of place names and encouraged their proliferation is the pleasure they provided the poet and the jokester, as discussed in section 8 of the Appendix. Place names are far from static, and their numbers increase more rapidly than most parts of an individual's total lexicon. Names are constantly being given to new houses and buildings, land holdings, airstrips, streets, and towns, and old names are replaced by new ones. The change from rural to urban living in Hawai'i, the rapid increase in population by birth and immigration, the development of new towns and the expansion of old ones, with attendant obliteration of natural landmarks, and the gradual disappearance of the Hawaiian language, have brought many additions and changes in the names of places, as well as changes in other aspects of island life. It is all the more essential, then, to record the names and the lore associated with them now, while Hawaiians, such as the senior compiler, are here to lend us their knowledge. And, whatever the fate of the Hawaiian language, the place names will endure, in some shape or form, as a part of the English language.

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Faced with an ever-increasing body of names, compilers of gazetteers are forced to choose the names to be included. They may decide to list all the names on certain maps, or only those of towns of a certain size, or of land areas of a specified magnitude, or those names deriving from a given language, or those

Preface containing words of particular semantic areas, or those deemed romantic, poetic, or picturesque. Early in this study we decided not to focus in any such way, but rather to list samples of all sorts of names: small places and large ones, high mountains and tiny valleys, Honolulu streets and buildings, surfing areas, and even stones. We have attempted to show what places the Hawaiians, both early and contemporary, considered worthy of naming—by no means everything in a given category, but the most often heard representatives of all the categories. Hundreds of names mentioned in published legends and chants cannot be found on maps. These were excluded unless they were well known to one of the compilers. Also excluded were alternate spellings used by explorers and others before the present orthography was adopted in 1826. Cook, for example, wrote Hawai'i as Owy-hee (the Tahitian pronunciation today is Vaihl), Maui as Mowee, O'ahu as O-ahoo, Kaua'i as Atowai, and Ni'ihau as Neehau. Vancouver in 1794 wrote the same names Owhyee, Mowee, Woahoo, Attowai, and Onehow. Such spellings are of historic and linguistic interest, but the present study focuses on today's usages. In a few instances, however, outmoded forms are given, as La-haina for the present Lahaina. Names of winds and rains were not included, nor those of streets outside Honolulu unless they seemed of special interest or importance. In general only those Honolulu street names were included that have meanings not easily discoverable in the Hawaiian Dictionary. The important difference between place names in Hawai'i and those on the United States mainland is that in Hawai'i about 86 percent of the names are in the language of the aboriginal population—a single language that is phonetically simple and easily identifiable by the paucity of sounds and the lack of closed syllables and consonant clusters. On the Mainland, place names have been taken from a great many languages—some of them European—but a large proportion are from the languages of the first inhabitants, the American Indians. These languages, some of which are extinct, number many dozens, and some of them are of a bewildering phonetic complexity that is not revealed in the spelling. The place names are in daily use, but their meanings are known only to experts and in many cases not

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Preface even to them. Furthermore, most of the stories behind the names have been lost, distorted, and sentimentalized. The Hawaiian names, in contrast, usually have understandable meanings, and the stories illustrating many of the place names are well known and appreciated. Pele, the volcano goddess who turned so many luckless people into stones, is still feared and revered; sharks are sometimes considered protective; and the mischievous, sexually insatiable pig-man, Kama-pua'a, delights and amuses. Most places on the Mainland seem, by comparison, barren and bereft of traditions older than those introduced by the European and African immigrants. Whereas the Indians were considered savages and were slaughtered for their land, the Hawaiians were respected as people. Hawaiian kings and queens maintained their sovereignty almost until the present century. Intermarriage was and is extremely common. Not only does the Hawaiian past still live, it dates back a thousand years or more, whereas on most of the Mainland, traditions go back only a few centuries or even less. The land there seems lacking in history. Who were the Indians? What was their culture? Most persons do not know. One of the pleasures of living in Hawai'i is the presence of Hawaiians, with their ancient language and traditions. The place names provide a living and largely intelligible history. The Hawaiian world extended from Nihoa Island beyond Kaua'i to South Point at the farthest tip of Hawai'i. This study covers a somewhat wider area, including all the Northwest (Leeward) Hawaiian Islands as far west as Midway. Uniform coverage of all the islands was not possible. Areas in which the compilers had special interest or knowledge, and for which adequate published sources are available, are covered in more detail than other places. Moloka'i, for example, is extremely well treated, Kaua'i least well. The Hawaiians, like Polynesians in other areas, considered themselves very much a unified whole, and they loved to express in sayings the eastern and western limits (never the northern and southern) of their domain, usually with reference to the passage of the sun:

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Mai ka la 'o'ili i Ha'eha'e a hali'i i ka mole o Lehua. From the sun's appearance at Ha'eha'e until [it] lies spread forth at the roots of Lehua.

Preface Mai ke kai kuwà e nu ana i ka ulu hala o Kea'au a ka 'airia ka'ili Id o lalo o Wai-ku'au-hoe. From the noisy sea murmuring to the pandanus groves of Kea'au to the land that snatches away the sun at Wai-ku'au-hoe. Samuel H. Elbert

xiii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book is the result of many years of research; space does not permit mention of everyone who answered our innumerable questions. The entire manuscript, some 900 pages, was reviewed at an earlier stage, with particular attention to the islands of Moloka'i and O'ahu, by Catherine C. Summers, associate researcher in anthropology at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum. As coauthor of Sites of Oahu and as author of the recent Molokai: a Site Survey, she is especially qualified to review place names of these two islands. The Committee for the Preservation of Hawaiian Language, Art, and Culture financed a large part of the manuscript preparation, including preparation of the maps. We wish to express our appreciation to the committee and particularly to its chairman at the time, Thomas Nickerson. Officials at Iolani School, Punahou School, St. Andrew's Priory, the University of Hawai'i, and the Ka-mehameha Schools (especially Donald D. Mitchell) kindly furnished detailed background information about the buildings on their respective campuses. The various county boards of parks and recreation supplied the names of parks and trails throughout the State. The program for IBM computer 360/65 was prepared by Ann M. Peters and Robert W. Hsu. Their recommendations as to types of information that could be recovered via computer were most helpful. Much information over the years was provided by Edwin H. Bryan, Jr., of the Bishop Museum, who has his own collection of 2S,000 Hawaiian place names. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin kindly gave us permission to quote from the series of articles on Honolulu streets written by Clarice B. Taylor in cooperation with George Miranda, and published in 19S6 in the newspaper. Informants for names of present-day surfing sites were John Kelly, founder of the Save Our Surf movement, and Donald

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Acknowledgments M. Topping, also a veteran surfer. Kelly described types of waves, indicated the seasons when surfing is best in certain localities, and explained the rationale for some of the peculiar new English names. A great many other persons contributed information and references. We wLh particularly to thank Elizabeth Bushnell, Elizabeth Ball C&rr, Agnes Conrad, Frances Damon Holt, Gavan Daws, Yasuto Kaihara, Edgar C. Knowlton, Jr., Gordon A. Macdonald, the Reverend Mary Numele Moku, Edwin H. Mookini, Zelie D. Sherwood, and Eleanor Williamson. The Preface and Appendix were reviewed by Albert J. Schiitz, and we are grateful for his many practical suggestions and comments. None of those named, of course, is in any way responsible for the shortcomings and incompleteness of our work.

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Í ra I xt Maori: Maungapohatu I Hawai'i: War-lele I Niue: Vailele j

bay.

.white

mountain.

stony mountain

watenau

These names, which we tentatively reject as cognate because they could have originated independently, have at least similarity in meaning, but many place names old enough to go back to Proto-Polynesian are without meaning. Thus a comparativist working with place names does not have the tool of meaning (other than the vague gloss 'place name') to check hypotheses based on phonemic similarity. Still, even without the tool of meaning, we feel that occurrence of the meaningless and unusual name *Takuu in various shapes over broad expanses of the Pacific Ocean cannot be due to coincidence. The comparison of Polynesian place names attempted here is' largely exploratory; it seems impossible to make a definitive comparative study until certain theoretical problems are ironed out, and until rather lengthy phonemic lists of numerous places are available. In Table 1 we list only a few Hawaiian names that

278

7. The Samoan "g," pronounced rtg, is written here as it is sounded.

-3 H S C ° ¡2 •.5¡ 3t lc è«9 3D. S •5 .S 3 «i M o n *i JZ M G AM A OO es "esfchhhh XX

es D¿ es a. u

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bS * S 3« 0? es > A o es >> >

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