Pono

History & meaning

Pono is one of the handful of words you cannot describe Hawaiian thought without. English needs a paragraph for what it does in two syllables. It is goodness, uprightness, morality. It is also correct procedure, the proper way to carry a thing out. It is also well-being, prosperity, benefit — the sense in which a household or a fishery can be pono. It is also the flat description of something being accurate, in order, as it should be, and the Pukui and Elbert entry runs long enough to end with "should, ought, must", because pono is the word for obligation too. The nearest single English equivalent is "right", provided you take right conduct, the right way and things coming right all at once. What English splits into ethics, procedure and welfare, Hawaiian treats as one condition: relations in proper balance.

The word has a public life as well as a private one. In February 1843 a British naval captain acting without instruction took possession of the islands; sovereignty was restored to Kamehameha III five months later, on 31 July, and the sentence he is remembered as speaking that day — Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono — became the motto of the Kingdom and remains the motto of the State of Hawaiʻi. It is on the state seal, it was struck onto the 2008 Hawaiʻi quarter, and the anniversary is still marked as Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea, Restoration Day. The same root gives hoʻoponopono, literally to make things right and right again, the family process of talking a grievance through to resolution that Mary Kawena Pukui documented in detail. It is worth adding that the versions of hoʻoponopono circulating in self-help publishing bear little relation to the practice she described.

Why parents choose it

Most virtue names hand the child a compliment already paid. Pono hands him a standard instead — a thing to keep checking himself against, which is closer to how the word is actually used. In Hawaiʻi "that's not pono" is an ordinary sentence, spoken about a decision or a business or a piece of legislation, so the name is not decorative or archival; it is current, and a child called Pono will hear it applied to the world around him all his life.

Middle names for Pono

Two open syllables leave the field wide: Pono Daniel, Pono Isaiah and Pono Ezra all keep the moral register, while Pono Kealoha stays entirely in Hawaiian. Pono is also one of the most-used Hawaiian middle names in the islands, so the reverse order is every bit as authentic. The middle names guide covers both directions.

Famous Ponos

There is no celebrity Pono, and it would slightly miss the point if there were. The word's fame is civic: it closes the state motto, and it is the standard Hawaiian political vocabulary for whether something has been done rightly. The root is old across Polynesia as well — Māori pono means true, genuine, honest, and whakapono is to believe — so the name reaches back a long way before the 1843 sentence that made it famous in English.

Consider instead

Kūpono is this exact word with kū, "to stand", in front of it: uprightness, made concrete. Alakaʻi, "leader, guide", swaps moral balance for responsibility. Kaulana, "famous, celebrated", is a different sort of aspiration and a good foil if Pono feels too weighty.