Naming and Un-naming

Lanikai, a Place where Fish Meet Their Maker

© Kīhei de Silva

It was perhaps in the mid-sixteenth century during the reign of Oʻahu’s ruling chief Kakuhihewa that the name Kaʻōhao, literally “the tying,” was given to a land division along the south-eastern shore of Kailua in commemoration of the successful evasion of Kakuhihewa’s spies by Hauna,[i] the counselor and guardian of Lonoikamakahiki, ruling chief of the island of Hawaiʻi. Upon his arrival in Kailua, Hauna persuaded two women to allow him to take the losing side in the final stages of a kōnane game in which they were engaged. The domestic nature of this pastime proved an effective disguise for Hauna since the Oʻahu chief’s men had been instructed to look for a furtive stranger. Not only did Hauna go unnoticed, thereby winning for his chief a bet involving the six districts of Oʻahu, Hauna also won – through sleight of hand – the pebble game with the two women who had wagered themselves against his twin canoe-loads of feather capes. Hauna bound the disconsolate women by their wrists and led them to his place of landing. To the women’s great relief, he then released them, explained his hide-in-plain-sight ruse, and made them a gift of his feather wealth. That place was then named Kaʻōhao in memory of the tying that began as servitude and ended in reward.[ii]

Abraham Fornander concluded this version of the moʻolelo of Kaʻōhao’s naming with: “Ua kapa ia ka inoa o kelawahi o Kaohao…a hiki mai i keia la” (And that place is called Kaʻōhao to this very day). Unfortunately, Fornander’s “this very day” ended almost a century ago. In 1924 an eager developer with an eye for sales and an ear for catchy names re-christened the place Lanikai in the mistaken belief that the new name meant “heavenly sea.” But in the Hawaiian language adjectives commonly follow their nouns, an so the new place name, which has last to this very day, bears the unlikely meaning of “sea heaven, marine heaven.”[iii] Lani-kai, then is a backwards-Hawaiian misnomer, a place where good fish meet their maker. As such, it is no name at all.

We live in a time of un-naming, in a time when old names for the land – names given in honor, memory, happiness, and sorrow – have been set aside for marketing come-ons that commemorate little more than a desire for sales, for ka mea poepoe, the round thing, money. We who learn and love the old names are, therefore, people of two worlds, residents of rival geographies. We lead our everyday lives on the asphalt and zoysia crust of Enchanted Lake, Bay View, Crest View, and Soda Creek. But when our souls wither and thirst, we seek refuge in that other, deeper geography where the true names of our ʻāina are sung by the stones themselves. It is in these stones, in what Ellen Prendergast has called “ka ʻai kamahaʻo o ka ʻāina” (the astonishing food of the land),[iv] that we the stone-eaters of this land find sustenance and comfort, pride and purpose.

Kawai Cockett’s album ʻO Kaʻōhao Kuʻu ʻĀina Nani – Kaʻōhao My Beautiful Land is a binding of songs sung to the music of stones clattering in the tide. These are songs tied to the memory of names, to the celebration of places, flowers, and fragrances, and to the magic of creation and re-creation.  These, too, are songs woven in defiance of that which unravels, unmakes, and un-names.  Our songs call for the renewal of life and for the reawakening of a land and its people. They fashion for us a piko, a lifeline of sweet affection,  by which we are connected to both our source and future. Kaʻōhao, then, is our metaphor for the tie that binds us to the stones of our land, It is in this servitude that we find our greatest reward.

[i] Hauna means “foul smelling, as of spoiling fish or meat.”

[ii] Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folklore, Bishop Museum Press, 1919, V. 4: 309-314.  There are at least two other Hawaiian language newspaper versions of this story, both published considerably earlier than Fornander’s collection. Click here to read about them.

[iii] Pukui, Elbert, and Moʻokini, Place Names of Hawaiʻi, University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1976. “Kaʻōhao,” p. 85.  “Lanikai,” p. 129.

[iv] Ellen Kekoaohiwaikalani Prendergast, “He Inoa no nā Keiki o ka Bana Lahui,” Hawaii Holomua, February 25, 1893. The song is more commonly known as “Kaulana nā Pua o Hawaiʻi.”