HawaiianBoys and girls2 syllables
Meaning: star.
Hōkū
| Origin | Hawaiian — hōkū, the general word for a star |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Star. In the traditional lunar month, Hōkū is also the name of the night of the full moon |
| Pronunciation | HOH-koo. Both vowels take a kahakō, the macron that marks a long vowel, so neither syllable is clipped |
| Gender | Given to boys and to girls; Hawaiian nouns carry no grammatical gender |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100 and rare on the mainland; familiar in Hawaiʻi, where it is used across the board rather than reserved for one sex |
| Variants | Hoku (unmarked spelling); the compounds Hōkūlani, heavenly star, and Hōkūleʻa, star of gladness |
| Nicknames | None in general use — at two syllables the name is already as short as it goes |
History & meaning
Hōkū is a star, any star, and Hawaiian builds outward from it. Hōkūlani is a heavenly star; Hōkūloa is the morning star, Venus; Hōkūpaʻa, the fixed star, is Polaris, which never moves because it sits on the pole. The word also names a night: in the Hawaiian lunar month each of the roughly thirty nights has its own name, and Hōkū is the one when the moon comes up full and round. That double sense — a point of light and a phase of the calendar — is the kind of density Hawaiian vocabulary names tend to have.
The name that made hōkū famous beyond the islands is Hōkūleʻa, star of gladness, the Hawaiian name for Arcturus, which passes directly overhead at Hawaiʻi's latitude. The Polynesian Voyaging Society launched a double-hulled canoe under that name in 1975 and sailed it to Tahiti the following year with no instruments aboard, navigated by Mau Piailug of Satawal in Micronesia, one of the last men alive who knew how. The voyage is the single event most often credited with reviving Hawaiian navigation, and with it a generation of Hawaiian names. Others are collected on the Hawaiian names page.
Why parents choose it
Two syllables, one image, nothing to explain. Hōkū also sits comfortably as a middle name for a child whose first name is English, which is how a great many Hawaiʻi-born children carry a Hawaiian name at all.
Middle names for Hōkū
A short first name can take a long middle without strain: Hōkū Alexander, Hōkū James, Hōkū Kai, Hōkū Koa. Reverse the order and it works just as well, which the middle names guide covers under short-first pairings.
Famous Hōkūs
The best-known bearer is the singer Hoku Ho, daughter of the entertainer Don Ho, who had a U.S. pop hit in 2000 — a useful illustration that this name belongs to girls as readily as boys. Beyond people, the word is everywhere in Hawaiian public life: the Nā Hōkū Hanohano Awards are the islands' annual music prizes, and Hōkūleʻa herself, still sailing, has completed a circumnavigation of the globe.
Consider instead
Kōnane stays in the night sky — it is the word for bright moonlight — and shares the same soft consonants. Kalani means the heavens, or the royal one, and is the broader version of the same idea. If it is the star rather than the language you want, Orion gives you a constellation and a Greek myth attached.