260 Hawaiian Last Names That Are Steeped in Legacy (With Meanings & Origins)

Hawaiian last names are not simply surnames. They are living chants, encoded in sound, carrying the weight of volcanoes and ocean winds and the blood of navigators who crossed three thousand miles of open Pacific by starlight alone. Every Hawaiian last name is a doorway into a civilization so ancient, so ecologically wise, and so heartbreakingly beautiful that even its syllables feel like something sacred worth protecting. If you have ever felt the pull of the islands in your chest without being able to explain why, these names are the reason.

What makes Hawaiian last names unlike any other surname tradition on earth is the way they refuse to separate the human from the natural world. A Hawaiian last name can mean the rain that falls only on one specific valley, the wind that moves through one particular mountain pass, the star that guided one family’s canoe across a specific stretch of open ocean centuries ago. These are names that carry an entire people’s memory, their grief, their navigation, their love for a land they have always called mother. In the 260 names that follow, that memory is waiting for you to find it.

Ancient and Chiefly Hawaiian Last Names

Kamehameha

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The lonely one, the one set apart
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the great king who unified the Hawaiian Islands under a single rule for the first time in history, Kamehameha is the most historically weighted surname in the entire Hawaiian tradition, carrying the legacy of a warrior-chief whose diplomatic genius and military brilliance shaped the modern Hawaiian nation and whose name means the lonely one set apart, a meaning that captures perfectly the solitude of extraordinary leadership.

Kalakaua

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The day of battle, wreath of battle
• Popularity: >1000

The surname of King David Kalakaua, the last king of Hawaii and the man known as the Merrie Monarch whose reign represented the last flowering of traditional Hawaiian culture before annexation, Kalakaua carries an extraordinary royal heritage and a deep connection to the Hawaiian cultural renaissance he personally led by restoring the hula and the chant traditions that earlier missionaries had nearly destroyed.

Liliuokalani

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The smarting of the royal ones, heaviness of the royal child
• Popularity: >1000

The surname of Queen Liliuokalani, the last reigning monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom whose illegal overthrow in 1893 by American businessmen backed by United States Marines remains one of the most painful moments in Hawaiian history, this name carries both extraordinary royal heritage and a profound legacy of dignity in the face of injustice that makes it one of the most emotionally powerful surnames on this entire list.

Kaahumanu

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The bird feather mantle, feather cloak
• Popularity: >1000

The surname of Queen Kaahumanu, the favorite wife of Kamehameha I who became the most powerful woman in Hawaiian history after her husband’s death, ruling as kuhina nui or regent with extraordinary political skill and eventually converting to Christianity in a decision that transformed the entire trajectory of Hawaiian religious and cultural life. Her name refers to the sacred feather cloaks that were among the most precious objects in Hawaiian chiefly culture.

Kamakau

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The adze, the tool of shaping
• Popularity: >1000

The surname of Samuel Kamakau, the great nineteenth-century Hawaiian historian whose writings in the Hawaiian language newspapers of his era preserved more knowledge of traditional Hawaiian culture than any other single source, Kamakau carries an extraordinary intellectual and cultural heritage and the specific meaning of the adze, the tool used by Hawaiian craftsmen to shape canoes and sacred objects from the finest hardwoods of the forest.

Malo

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The loincloth, the malo garment
• Popularity: >1000

The surname of David Malo, the greatest Hawaiian scholar of the nineteenth century whose work Moolelo Hawaii remains the most important single text on traditional Hawaiian culture ever written, Malo carries an extraordinary intellectual heritage and a deep connection to the effort to preserve Hawaiian knowledge in written form before it could be lost to the catastrophic depopulation and cultural disruption of the contact period.

Kepelino

• Origin: Hawaiian adaptation of Zebedee
• Meaning: Hawaiian form of a biblical name
• Popularity: >1000

The surname of Kepelino Keauokalani, the nineteenth-century Hawaiian scholar whose manuscript on Hawaiian traditions and beliefs preserved extraordinary knowledge of pre-contact Hawaiian religious and cultural life, Kepelino carries a deep heritage at the intersection of traditional Hawaiian knowledge and the new Christian world that arrived with the missionaries and permanently altered the Hawaiian cultural landscape.

Kahananui

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The great work, the large gathering
• Popularity: >1000

A chiefly Hawaiian surname meaning the great work or the large gathering, Kahananui carries a warm commanding quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of collective labor and communal gathering that was the social foundation of the ahupuaa land management system through which Hawaiian civilization organized its relationship with the natural world across every island in the chain.

Kauikeaouli

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The small dark cloud over the deep blue sea
• Popularity: >1000

The given name used as a surname of Kamehameha III, the longest-reigning monarch in Hawaiian history whose reign saw both the Great Mahele land division that transformed Hawaiian land tenure and the granting of the first Hawaiian constitution, Kauikeaouli carries an extraordinary royal and political heritage and one of the most poetically beautiful meanings in the entire Hawaiian naming tradition.

Naihe

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The gentle rustling, soft movement
• Popularity: >1000

A chiefly Hawaiian surname carried by Naihe, the great orator and chief of the Kona district who was one of the most important political figures of the early nineteenth century Hawaiian Kingdom, this name carries a cool gentle quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of oratory as one of the highest and most respected of all the chiefly arts.

Ocean and Navigation Hawaiian Last Names

Kahananui

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The great work of the sea
• Popularity: >1000

Already celebrated in the chiefly section, Kahananui belongs here again for its deep connection to the Hawaiian maritime tradition in which the great work was always understood to include the extraordinary labor of open ocean navigation that brought the first Hawaiians to the islands across three thousand miles of open Pacific.

Kai

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Sea, ocean, sea water
• Popularity: >1000

The clean minimal Hawaiian word for the sea used as a surname, Kai carries a luminous oceanic quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian understanding of the ocean not as a barrier but as a highway, not as a danger but as a home, the great connecting medium through which Hawaiian civilization maintained its relationships with the broader Polynesian world across centuries of deliberate voyaging.

Nalu

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Wave, surf, the breaking wave
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for wave and surf used as a surname, Nalu carries a cool rhythmic quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian relationship with the ocean swell that has shaped every aspect of Hawaiian culture from surfing, the sport that Hawaii gave to the world, to the wave metaphors that run through Hawaiian poetry and chant and that express the Hawaiian understanding of time as something that moves in waves rather than in straight lines.

Makoa

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Fearless, bold, courageous on the sea
• Popularity: >1000

A Hawaiian surname meaning fearless and bold, Makoa carries a warm commanding quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of courage in the face of the open ocean, the specific fearlessness required of navigators who committed themselves and their communities to voyages of thousands of miles with no certainty of landfall and no possibility of turning back once the home island had dropped below the horizon.

Kealoha

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The love, the beloved one
• Popularity: >1000

One of the most warmly beautiful surnames in the entire Hawaiian tradition, Kealoha carries the Hawaiian concept of aloha inside it, that extraordinary word that means love and peace and compassion and presence and the breath of life all at once, a concept so central to Hawaiian civilization that it was encoded in the Aloha Spirit Law of the state of Hawaii as a legally recognized value that all state employees are required to embody in their interactions with the public.

Hokulea

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Star of gladness, Arcturus
• Popularity: >1000

Named after Arcturus, the star that passes directly over Hawaii and that was the primary navigation star used by Polynesian voyagers to find the islands across the open Pacific, Hokulea as a surname carries one of the most profound navigation heritages in the entire Hawaiian tradition and is also the name of the traditional double-hulled voyaging canoe whose 1976 voyage to Tahiti launched the Polynesian voyaging renaissance that transformed Hawaiian and Pacific Islander identity.

Moananuiakea

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The great wide ocean, the vast Pacific
• Popularity: >1000

One of the most expansive and beautiful surnames in the entire Hawaiian tradition, Moananuiakea combines moana meaning ocean, nui meaning great and vast, and akea meaning wide and spacious, into a single compound name that describes the Pacific Ocean itself in its full incomprehensible immensity. It is a surname that carries the entire Hawaiian relationship with the ocean inside its syllables.

Paoa

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The paddle, canoe paddle
• Popularity: >1000

A Hawaiian surname meaning the canoe paddle, one of the most sacred objects in the Hawaiian material culture as the implement through which human effort was translated into movement across the ocean, Paoa carries a deep maritime heritage and a warm slightly intimate quality rooted in the tradition of master canoe builders and navigators who were among the most respected members of traditional Hawaiian society.

Kaholo

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The running, swift movement, to move swiftly
• Popularity: >1000

A Hawaiian surname meaning swift movement and running, Kaholo carries a cool dynamic quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of swift canoe travel across the channels between islands, the specific speed and grace of a well-built double-hulled canoe running before the trade winds across the deep blue channels that separate the Hawaiian Islands from each other.

Malama

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: To care for, to protect, to tend
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for caring and protecting used as a surname, Malama carries a warm deeply moral quality and a profound connection to the Hawaiian concept of malama aina, caring for the land, which was the ethical foundation of the entire ahupuaa land management system and which has become the central concept of the contemporary Hawaiian environmental and cultural revival movement.

Nature and Land Hawaiian Last Names

Mauna

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Mountain, the mountain
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for mountain used as a surname, Mauna carries a cool elevated quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian understanding of mountains as sacred ancestors, as the elder relatives of the human community whose bodies form the islands themselves. The word appears in Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, the two great volcanic mountains of the Big Island, and carries the specific Hawaiian reverence for high places as the closest points between the human world and the divine.

Pali

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Cliff, steep slope, precipice
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for cliff and steep precipice used as a surname, Pali carries a bold dramatic quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian landscape of dramatic volcanic cliffs that drop straight into the ocean along the windward coasts of the islands. The word is most associated with the Nuuanu Pali, the great cliff on Oahu where Kamehameha I drove the defending Oahu forces over the edge in the battle that completed his conquest of the islands.

Waioli

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Joyful water, singing water
• Popularity: >1000

A beautiful Hawaiian compound surname combining wai meaning water with oli meaning chant or song, Waioli means joyful singing water and carries a luminous musical quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of fresh water as a sacred gift from the mountains whose movement through the landscape was understood as a form of natural chanting. It is also the name of a historic mission in Kauai’s Hanalei Valley.

Kawainui

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The big water, the great waters
• Popularity: >1000

A Hawaiian compound surname combining kawai meaning water with nui meaning great and large, Kawainui refers to the great freshwater marsh on the windward side of Oahu that was one of the most productive fishponds in the ancient Hawaiian ahupuaa system and carries a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of freshwater management as one of the highest expressions of Hawaiian ecological intelligence.

Kamali

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The child, the young one
• Popularity: >1000

A Hawaiian surname meaning the child and the young one, Kamali carries a warm tender quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of honoring the young as the living continuation of the ancestral line, the physical embodiment of the genealogical chants that connected every Hawaiian family back through the generations to the gods themselves at the beginning of the cosmological order.

Lani

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Heaven, sky, royal, heavenly
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for sky and heaven used as a surname, Lani carries a luminous elevated quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian understanding of the sky as the dwelling place of the gods and the source of the rain that fed the taro fields that were the agricultural foundation of Hawaiian civilization. In chiefly contexts, lani also meant royal, giving this surname a dual resonance of natural beauty and social distinction.

Pohaku

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Rock, stone, the stone
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for rock and stone used as a surname, Pohaku carries a cool grounded quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of stone as a sacred material, the substance from which the heiau temples were built, from which the ko’a fishing shrines were constructed, and from which the great stone images called ki’i pohaku were carved to embody the presence of the ancestral spirits in the landscape.

Waimea

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Reddish water, red water
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the reddish color of the water that flows from the iron-rich volcanic soil of the upland valleys, Waimea is one of the most beautiful Hawaiian place names used as a surname and carries a deep connection to the specific landscape quality of the valleys on the Big Island and Kauai where the reddish earth colors everything including the water that runs through it.

Koolau

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Windward, the windward side
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the windward side of the Hawaiian Islands where the trade winds drop their moisture and create the lush green landscapes that most people picture when they think of Hawaii, Koolau carries a cool fresh quality and a deep connection to the specific microclimate of the windward coasts where the rain falls daily and the valleys stay permanently green and the waterfalls come down the cliffs in long white threads.

Manoa

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Vast, deep, thick, abundant
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the famous valley behind Honolulu that is one of the wettest and most lushly vegetated places on Oahu, Manoa carries a warm abundant quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian appreciation for places of extraordinary natural richness where the rain falls almost daily and the vegetation grows with a density and greenness that seems almost impossibly vivid to eyes accustomed to drier landscapes.

Wind and Rain Hawaiian Last Names

Kona

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Leeward side, leeward wind
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the leeward side of the Hawaiian Islands where the wind comes from the south and west rather than the prevailing northeast trade winds, Kona carries a warm dry quality and a deep connection to the specific microclimate of the leeward coasts where the coffee grows and the afternoons are calm and the sunsets over the ocean are among the most beautiful in the entire Pacific world.

Naulu

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The passing rain shower, the rain cloud
• Popularity: >1000

A Hawaiian surname meaning the passing shower and the rain cloud, Naulu carries a cool slightly mysterious quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of naming the specific rains of each district, a tradition so refined and so precise that ancient Hawaiians had hundreds of names for different types of rain falling in different places under different conditions, each name capturing a quality of rainfall that no single English word could translate.

Waipahu

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Water gushing forth, the gushing spring
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the freshwater spring that once gushed from the ground in the area now known as the city of Waipahu on Oahu, this surname carries a cool dynamic quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of freshwater springs as sacred gifts from the earth, places where the underground water that had filtered through the volcanic rock finally emerged into the light and gave life to the communities that gathered around it.

Olokele

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The sliding rain, the slanting rain
• Popularity: >1000

A Hawaiian surname meaning the slanting sliding rain that comes in at an angle driven by the trade winds, Olokele carries a cool slightly poetic quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of rain-naming that distinguished between every possible quality of rainfall from the heaviest mountain deluge to the finest coastal mist with a precision and a poetry that reflects the Hawaiian understanding of rain as one of the most sacred and most varied of all natural phenomena.

Makani

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Wind, the wind
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for wind used as a surname, Makani carries a cool dynamic quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of wind as one of the most spiritually significant of all natural forces, the medium through which the ancestral spirits moved through the landscape and through which the prayers of the living reached the ears of the dead. Hawaiian culture recognized and named dozens of specific winds, each with its own personality and its own spiritual associations.

Kahili

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The feather standard, royal feather staff
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the great feather standards that were the most visible symbols of Hawaiian chiefly rank, tall staffs topped with cylinders of feathers that were carried before ali’i chiefs as they moved through the landscape, Kahili carries an extraordinary chiefly heritage and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of featherwork as the highest expression of Hawaiian material culture and the most visible marker of royal presence.

Kipuka

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: A clear place in the mist, an opening
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for a place of refuge in the landscape, an area of older land surrounded by newer lava flows where life has continued uninterrupted, Kipuka carries a profound metaphorical quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of finding and protecting spaces of continuity within the constant geological and cultural change that has always characterized life on volcanic islands at the edge of the world’s largest ocean.

Punohu

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The low-hanging rainbow, the ground rainbow
• Popularity: >1000

A Hawaiian surname meaning the low-hanging rainbow that appears close to the ground after a rain shower, Punohu carries a luminous beautiful quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of rainbows as one of the most spiritually significant of all natural phenomena, signs of chiefly presence and divine favor that appeared in the mists above sacred places and in the spray of waterfalls falling from the volcanic cliffs.

Anuenue

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Rainbow, the rainbow
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for rainbow used as a surname, Anuenue carries one of the most luminously beautiful qualities of any name on this list and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of rainbows as omens of great significance, as the visible presence of the gods in the natural world, and as the specific atmospheric phenomenon that appears with such extraordinary frequency in the Hawaiian Islands that it has become one of the defining visual signatures of the place itself.

Mokuleia

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The district of abundance, the abundant isle
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the ahupuaa district on the north shore of Oahu that was known for its extraordinary agricultural and maritime abundance, Mokuleia carries a warm generous quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of place names that encode the specific productive qualities of the land, the memory of which districts were most fertile and which shores were most generous with their fish and which valleys were most reliable in their rainfall.

Plant and Forest Hawaiian Last Names

Kukui

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Candlenut tree, light, enlightenment
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the kukui or candlenut tree whose nuts were burned as candles and whose oil was used for light throughout traditional Hawaiian civilization, Kukui carries a warm luminous quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of the kukui as the tree of enlightenment and of light in both the literal and spiritual senses. The kukui is the state tree of Hawaii and remains one of the most culturally significant plants in the entire Hawaiian tradition.

Lehua

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The lehua flower, the ohia lehua blossom
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the brilliant red flower of the ohia lehua tree that is the first plant to colonize new lava flows and that blooms at the summit of Mauna Kea in conditions of extraordinary cold and wind, Lehua carries a warm brave quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian legend of Lehua and Ohia, the great love story in which the god Ku transformed the warrior Ohia into a tree and the goddess Pele then transformed his beloved Lehua into the flower so the two lovers would never be separated.

Maile

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The maile vine, the fragrant vine
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the maile vine whose fragrant leaves are among the most sacred plants in the Hawaiian tradition, used to make the lei that are given at the most important moments of Hawaiian life, Maile carries a warm sacred quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of plant-based spirituality in which specific plants were the physical embodiments of specific deities and the gathering of those plants was itself a sacred act requiring prayer and careful protocol.

Hala

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The pandanus tree, the hala tree
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the pandanus or hala tree whose leaves were the primary material for Hawaiian weaving and whose fruit clusters were eaten and whose aerial roots anchored the tree in coastal soils, Hala carries a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of material culture in which the hala tree provided the raw material for the finest examples of Hawaiian weaving, including the beautiful lauhala mats and baskets that were among the most admired products of Hawaiian craft tradition.

Koa

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Warrior, brave, the koa tree
• Popularity: >1000

Named after both the quality of warrior bravery and the magnificent koa tree whose hard red wood was the preferred material for Hawaiian canoes and surfboards and calabashes and weapons and whose grain is among the most beautiful of any wood in the world, Koa carries a dual heritage of martial courage and natural beauty that makes it one of the most resonant surnames in the entire Hawaiian tradition.

Lokelani

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Small rose of heaven, heavenly rose
• Popularity: >1000

A beautiful Hawaiian compound surname combining loke meaning rose with lani meaning heaven and sky, Lokelani is the name of the small pink rose that is the official flower of the island of Maui and carries a warm heavenly quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of island-specific flowers as the floral embodiments of each island’s specific spiritual character and natural beauty.

Palapalai

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The delicate fern, the lacy fern
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the delicate palapalai fern that was sacred to the hula and that was used to decorate the hula altar dedicated to Laka, the goddess of hula, Palapalai carries a cool graceful quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of hula as a sacred art form in which every plant used in the costume and the altar carried specific spiritual meaning and specific connections to the divine forces that the hula was designed to honor and invoke.

Hapuu

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The tree fern, the giant fern
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the hapuu or Hawaiian tree fern whose massive trunks form the understory of the native Hawaiian forest at middle elevations on all the main islands, Hapuu carries a cool forest quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of the native forest as one of the most sacred landscapes in the entire island environment, a place of perpetual moisture and green shadow where the native birds sing and the ancestral spirits move through the undergrowth.

Wiliwili

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The wiliwili tree, constantly turning
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the wiliwili tree that is the largest native dryland tree in Hawaii, whose seeds were used as fishing floats and whose light wood was used for surfboards, Wiliwili carries a warm dry quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of the dryland forest as a distinct and valuable ecosystem that supported its own community of specialized plants and birds in the rain shadow of the volcanic mountains.

Naupaka

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The naupaka plant, the half flower
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the naupaka, the coastal and mountain plant whose flowers appear to be cut in half and whose Hawaiian legend tells of two lovers separated by the gods with one transformed into the mountain naupaka and the other into the beach naupaka, their half-flowers a permanent reminder of their separation, Naupaka carries one of the most poignantly beautiful meanings of any plant name in the Hawaiian tradition.

Spiritual and Sacred Hawaiian Last Names

Heiau

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Temple, sacred place of worship
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the heiau, the stone temple platforms that were the centers of Hawaiian religious life and that ranged from small family shrines to massive royal temples requiring the labor of thousands over many years, Heiau carries a profound spiritual quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of sacred architecture as one of the most powerful expressions of the relationship between the human community and the divine forces that governed the natural world.

Kahuna

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Priest, expert, master of a craft
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the kahuna, the Hawaiian experts and priests who held specialized knowledge in domains ranging from navigation to healing to architecture to prayer, Kahuna carries a profound intellectual and spiritual heritage and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of expertise as a sacred trust, a form of knowledge that was always understood to belong ultimately to the gods and that was held by the kahuna on behalf of the entire community.

Akua

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: God, spirit, divine being
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for god and divine spirit used as a surname, Akua carries a profound spiritual quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian understanding of divinity as something present throughout the natural world rather than located in a single transcendent being, a polytheistic cosmology of extraordinary richness in which every significant natural phenomenon was the physical expression of a specific divine personality.

Mana

• Origin: Hawaiian and broader Polynesian
• Meaning: Spiritual power, divine authority, supernatural force
• Popularity: >1000

The great Polynesian concept of supernatural power and spiritual authority used as a Hawaiian surname, Mana carries perhaps the most spiritually significant meaning of any name on this list, describing the invisible force that flowed through chiefs and priests and sacred objects and that was the foundation of the entire Hawaiian system of kapu, the sacred prohibitions that organized Hawaiian social and spiritual life and that were enforced through the understanding that violating them would diminish the mana of the entire community.

Kapu

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Sacred, forbidden, taboo
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the kapu system that was the foundation of traditional Hawaiian social and religious organization, Kapu carries a profound spiritual heritage and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of sacred prohibition as a technology of social order and spiritual protection. The abolition of the kapu system in 1819 by Kamehameha II was one of the most dramatic single events in Hawaiian history and fundamentally altered the entire structure of Hawaiian religious and social life.

Pule

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Prayer, to pray, chant of petition
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for prayer used as a surname, Pule carries a warm deeply spiritual quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of prayer as one of the most powerful and most precisely calibrated of all human activities, a tradition in which the exact words of a prayer, the specific timing of its delivery, and the spiritual condition of the person delivering it were all understood to affect the outcome with a precision that reflected the Hawaiian understanding of the relationship between language and reality.

Haumea

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Sacred birth, the goddess of fertility and birth
• Popularity: >1000

Named after Haumea, one of the most important goddesses in the Hawaiian pantheon, the goddess of fertility and childbirth whose story involves multiple rebirths and transformations and whose name is also that of a dwarf planet in the outer solar system, Haumea carries an extraordinary mythological heritage and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of female divine power as one of the most fundamental forces in the cosmological order.

Wakea

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The vast expanse, the sky father
• Popularity: >1000

Named after Wakea, the sky father who in Hawaiian cosmology mated with the earth mother Papahanaumoku to create the Hawaiian Islands and the Hawaiian people, Wakea carries the most foundational mythological heritage of any name on this list, the name of the divine ancestor from whom all Hawaiian people traced their genealogical descent through the chants that connected the living to the gods across the vast spans of cosmological time.

Lono

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: God of agriculture, rain, and fertility
• Popularity: >1000

Named after Lono, one of the four major Hawaiian gods who governed agriculture and rain and the fertility of the earth, Lono carries an extraordinary mythological heritage and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of agricultural ritual, the seasonal cycle of the Makahiki festival in which Lono’s return was celebrated with four months of games and feasting and the suspension of warfare that was the closest thing in Hawaiian culture to a period of universal peace.

Kane

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The god of life and fresh water, man
• Popularity: >1000

Named after Kane, the most benevolent of the four major Hawaiian gods who was associated with fresh water and the life it sustains, with the sun and its warmth, and with the forests and the birds that inhabit them, Kane carries a profound mythological heritage and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of fresh water as a sacred gift from the most life-giving of all the divine forces in the Hawaiian cosmological universe.

Genealogical and Family Hawaiian Last Names

Kupuna

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Grandparent, ancestor, elder
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for grandparent and respected elder used as a surname, Kupuna carries a warm deeply reverential quality and a profound connection to the Hawaiian tradition of ancestor veneration in which the kupuna were not simply old people but living repositories of ancestral knowledge, spiritual authority, and cultural continuity whose wisdom was the most precious resource available to the community.

Ohana

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Family, extended family, kinship group
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for family used as a surname, Ohana carries a warm deeply communal quality and a profound connection to the Hawaiian tradition of extended family as the fundamental unit of social organization, the group within which every individual found their identity and their obligations and their support across the full span of their life from birth to death and beyond into the ancestral realm where the family continued to exist in spiritual form.

Moopuna

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Grandchild, descendant
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for grandchild and descendant used as a surname, Moopuna carries a warm tender quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of genealogical continuity in which each new generation was understood as the living fulfillment of the prayers and sacrifices of all the generations that had preceded it, the latest expression of an ancestral line that stretched back through the chiefs and the gods to the very beginning of the cosmological order.

Kamaaina

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Child of the land, native born
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for a native-born person or long-time resident deeply rooted in the land, Kamaaina carries a warm deeply territorial quality and a profound connection to the Hawaiian tradition of belonging to a specific place, of having one’s identity formed by the specific landscape and the specific community of a particular ahupuaa district on a particular island in a way that could not be separated from that place without a fundamental loss of self.

Alii

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Chief, royalty, the chiefly class
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for chief and royalty used as a surname, Alii carries an extraordinary chiefly heritage and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of the hereditary chiefly class whose genealogical connections to the gods gave them the mana and the authority to govern the land and the people in accordance with the kapu system that organized every aspect of Hawaiian social and spiritual life.

Kaikamahine

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Daughter, girl child
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for daughter used as a surname, Kaikamahine carries a warm tender quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of female ancestry as one of the most important lines of genealogical transmission, the line through which specific spiritual gifts and specific sacred knowledge were passed from generation to generation in a tradition that recognized the importance of matrilineal descent alongside the patrilineal descent that dominated in the chiefly genealogical chants.

Keiki

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Child, offspring, the young one
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for child used as a surname, Keiki carries a warm tender quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of childhood as a sacred period of life in which the new generation was introduced to the cultural and spiritual knowledge that would allow them to fulfill their obligations to the land and to the ancestral line and to the community into which they had been born as the most recent expression of an unbroken genealogical continuity.

Hanauna

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Generation, a generation of people
• Popularity: >1000

The Hawaiian word for generation used as a surname, Hanauna carries a warm deeply temporal quality and a profound connection to the Hawaiian tradition of generational thinking in which every decision was understood to have consequences not just for the present generation but for the seven generations that would follow, a temporal perspective that informed the Hawaiian approach to land use and resource management and cultural transmission across the centuries.

Pookela

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The best, the excellent one, the highest
• Popularity: >1000

A Hawaiian surname meaning the best and the most excellent, Pookela carries a warm aspirational quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of excellence as a form of spiritual obligation, the understanding that to do anything less than one’s best was not simply a personal failure but a failure to honor the ancestors whose sacrifices had made the present possible and the descendants whose lives would be shaped by the quality of what the present generation left behind.

Nohea

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Handsome, beautiful, well-formed
• Popularity: >1000

A Hawaiian surname meaning beautiful and well-formed, Nohea carries a warm luminous quality and a deep connection to the Hawaiian tradition of beauty as a spiritual quality, the understanding that physical beauty was not simply an accident of genetics but a visible expression of the mana and the spiritual health of the individual and the family line that had produced them.

Island-Specific Hawaiian Last Names

Niihau

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Cold, the cold island
• Popularity: >1000

Named after Niihau, the small westernmost inhabited island of the Hawaiian chain that has been privately owned since 1864 and where Hawaiian remains the primary language of daily life, Niihau carries an extraordinary heritage as the name of the most culturally preserved Hawaiian community in the modern world, a place where the traditional Hawaiian way of life has been maintained with a continuity that makes it unique in the entire Hawaiian cultural landscape.

Molokai

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The gathering of waters
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the island of Molokai whose name is said to mean the gathering of waters, Molokai carries a deep connection to an island that is known as the most Hawaiian of all the main islands, the place where traditional Hawaiian culture has been maintained most continuously and where the largest proportion of the population claims Native Hawaiian ancestry and where the resistance to development and the commitment to the traditional relationship with the land remains strongest.

Lanai

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Day of conquest, hump
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the small pineapple island that was for decades the most completely plantation-owned island in the Hawaiian chain, Lanai carries a complex heritage that includes both the pre-contact Hawaiian community that inhabited the island and the extraordinary transformation it underwent during the plantation era and the subsequent transformation into a luxury resort destination that makes it one of the most dramatically changed landscapes in the entire Hawaiian archipelago.

Kahoolawe

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The carrying away by currents
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the small uninhabited island that was used as a naval bombing range by the United States military for fifty years and that became the symbol of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement when activists occupied it in 1976 to protest its continued military use, Kahoolawe carries an extraordinary political and cultural heritage as the island whose recovery from military damage has become the central project of the Hawaiian cultural and environmental revival.

Kauai

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Drying place, the place that dries
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the oldest and most geologically weathered of the main Hawaiian Islands whose deeply eroded valleys and dramatic sea cliffs represent the full flowering of what the younger volcanic islands will eventually become over millions of years of wind and rain and wave erosion, Kauai carries a deep geological heritage and a connection to the specific landscape beauty of the oldest island in the chain.

Maui

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Named after the demigod Maui
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the great Polynesian demigod Maui who in Hawaiian mythology fished the Hawaiian Islands up from the ocean floor with a magic fishhook made from his grandmother’s jawbone and who slowed the sun by lassoing it from the summit of Haleakala so that his mother would have enough daylight to dry her kapa cloth, Maui carries an extraordinary mythological heritage as the name of both the most famous figure in Polynesian mythology and the island named in his honor.

Oahu

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The gathering place
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the meaning of gathering place, Oahu carries a deep connection to the island that has been the center of Hawaiian political and cultural life since the unification of the islands and that today is home to the majority of Hawaii’s population, the seat of state government, and the location of Honolulu, the city where the tension between the Hawaiian cultural revival and the pressures of modernity and tourism and military presence is felt most acutely and most constantly.

Hamakua

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: The row, the long row
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the Hamakua district of the Big Island whose dramatic coastline of tall sea cliffs dropping straight into the deep blue ocean is one of the most visually spectacular landscapes in the entire Hawaiian archipelago, Hamakua carries a deep geographical heritage and a connection to the specific landscape of the windward coast of the Big Island where the sugar plantations of the plantation era were established in the deep rich soil of the ancient lava flows.

Kohala

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Uncertain, possibly the whale
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the Kohala district of the Big Island that was the birthplace of Kamehameha I and the home of the oldest Hawaiian communities on the island, Kohala carries an extraordinary historical heritage as the place from which the greatest figure in Hawaiian political history emerged and the landscape that shaped the warrior-chief who would unify all the islands under a single rule for the first time in their history.

Puna

• Origin: Hawaiian
• Meaning: Spring of water, coral, source
• Popularity: >1000

Named after the Puna district of the Big Island where the active lava flows of Kilauea volcano regularly reach the ocean and create new land, Puna carries a profound geological heritage as the name of the place where the Hawaiian Islands are still actively growing, where the primal creative force of the volcanic earth is still visible in the landscape, and where the Hawaiian understanding of the land as a living ancestor is most dramatically confirmed by ongoing geological reality.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why do so many Hawaiian last names begin with Ka or Ke?

A: The particles ka and ke are the Hawaiian definite articles meaning the, equivalent to the word the in English. In the Hawaiian language, ka is used before most words while ke is used before words beginning with certain consonants. When Hawaiian families took surnames in the nineteenth century following Western contact and the introduction of a written language, many chose surnames that began with these articles because it was natural in Hawaiian to refer to a person by their most significant characteristic or ancestral connection using the definite article. A name like Kamehameha means literally the lonely one set apart with ka as the article, and Kealoha means literally the love or the beloved one with ke as the article. This grammatical feature gives Hawaiian surnames their characteristic sound and distinguishes them immediately from the surnames of any other language family in the world.

Q: When did Hawaiian families begin using last names?

A: Traditional Hawaiian culture did not use hereditary surnames in the Western sense. Hawaiians used single names often of great length and poetic beauty that encoded genealogical and spiritual information about the individual. The introduction of Western naming conventions came with the missionaries in the 1820s and became increasingly formalized as the Hawaiian Kingdom developed Western-style legal and administrative institutions throughout the nineteenth century. The Great Mahele land reform of 1848 and the subsequent Kuleana Act required Hawaiian families to register land claims under consistent surnames, which accelerated the adoption of hereditary last names. Many families chose to formalize existing family names or ancestral place connections as their surnames while others adopted the surnames of missionaries or prominent figures with whom they were associated.

Q: What is the significance of the okina and kahako in Hawaiian surnames?

A: The okina, represented by a reverse apostrophe, is a glottal stop that functions as a consonant in Hawaiian and that completely changes the meaning of a word when present or absent. The kahako is a macron placed over a vowel to indicate that it is held for twice the normal length, which also changes meaning. In Hawaiian surnames, these marks are not decorative. They are linguistically essential. The difference between kai meaning sea and ka’i meaning to lead or guide is entirely carried by the okina. Many Hawaiian surnames were written without these marks during the period of Western dominance when Hawaiian orthography was not standardized, and the contemporary Hawaiian cultural revival has emphasized the restoration of correct okina and kahako usage as an essential part of reclaiming the precision and integrity of the Hawaiian language.

Q: Are Hawaiian last names still being created today?

A: Yes, the Hawaiian cultural renaissance that began in the 1970s with events like the first voyage of the Hokule’a voyaging canoe and the establishment of the Punana Leo Hawaiian language immersion schools has included a revival of Hawaiian naming practices. Families are increasingly choosing traditional Hawaiian names for their children and in some cases creating new Hawaiian names using traditional name-construction methods that combine meaningful Hawaiian words and roots in ways that follow the grammatical and poetic conventions of the language. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs and various Hawaiian cultural organizations have been involved in supporting this revival and in developing resources to help families research and construct authentic Hawaiian names that connect to their specific family histories and island origins.

Q: What is the connection between Hawaiian last names and the ahupuaa system?

A: The ahupuaa was the fundamental unit of Hawaiian land management, a wedge-shaped land division that typically ran from the mountain summit to the ocean and that contained within its boundaries all the resources a community needed to survive, from the upland forests to the taro fields to the fishing grounds offshore. Many Hawaiian surnames encode specific ahupuaa districts or the natural features that defined them, reflecting the Hawaiian tradition of identifying people with the specific land they came from and managed. A person with a surname referring to a specific valley or mountain or coastal feature was understood to have a genealogical and spiritual connection to that place that was as fundamental to their identity as their biological parentage.

Conclusion

Hawaiian last names are among the most extraordinary gifts that any culture has ever embedded in the simple act of naming a family. They carry inside their open vowels and their specific rhythms and their encoded meanings the full weight of a civilization that navigated the largest ocean on earth by the stars alone, that managed one of the most complex and productive agricultural and aquacultural systems in the pre-industrial world,

That developed a chant tradition of extraordinary beauty and intellectual complexity, and that has survived two centuries of catastrophic cultural disruption with enough vitality remaining to stage one of the most inspiring cultural revivals of the modern era. To carry a Hawaiian last name is to carry all of this history, to be a living link in a chain of memory that stretches back through the chiefs and the navigators and the farmers and the priests to the very gods whose unions in the Hawaiian cosmological tradition produced the islands themselves and the people who have called them home across more than a thousand years of continuous habitation.