Goose and Hawk

by Alex

Yesterday I finally acquired my Hawaiian name: Ka’iolama. It’s not unusual for people taking Hawaiian language classes to be given Hawaiian names by their kumu (teacher) but I during my first semester of Hawaiian I never asked for one. There were lots of reasons why: I had just finished getting “my Chinese name”:http://alex.golub.name/log/2005/06/22/request-for-comments/ (which ended up taking like a month), I wanted a good name rather than one that was just a translation of my English name (Aleka for Alex, Malia for Maria, Po for Paul, etc.) and finally — it just didn’t feel write. I’ve accumulted something live five or six names and nicknames by now and I take seriously the process of acquiring each one. In particular, taking a Hawaiian name as a recent immigrant to Hawaii — and indeed, a white anthropologist who specializes in the Pacific! — taking a Hawaiian name marked a certain level of commitment to and membership in a certain group of people interested in perpetuating Hawaiian language and culture, and I felt that one semester of learning how to say hello and goodbye in Hawaiian didn’t constitute a genuine engagement with that community.

My second semester of Hawaiian, however, has been much more intense and has involved a lot of immersive language learning. Not only and I sharing the classroom with students who are themselves kanaka maoli (indigenous Hawaiian), but even the white guys have Hawaiian names! It simply felt like I wasn’t trying to ‘pass’ as someone who knew Hawaiian culture — instead I felt out of place for _not_ having a Hawaiian name. So I figured it was time.

I talked with the two kumu who had taught me so far about my other names and tried to come up with one that fit them. My Hebrew name is Eliyahu (Elijah), which had a range of resonances for them, but these all had their roots in Christian missionization in the Pacific, and even if today there is nothing more authentically ‘Pacific’ than Christianity I didn’t feel comfortable with that. Rex had connotations of royalty that seemed hubristic and insensitive for a white person in a former kingdom to lay claim to. Plus Kalani (exalted one, heavenly one, often used for ‘chief’) is _way_ too overused and, in some people’s opinion, shouldn’t be used unless you _are_ exalted. My Chinese name, ‘exuberant Goose’ was nice, and I told my kumu I thought something that suggested great ambition and discipline combined with occasional bouts of extreme silliness would be appropriate.

After some thought we settled on Ka’iolama. Ka means “the”, and ‘io is “buteo soltarius”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Hawk, the Hawaiian Hawk. It is, admittedly, and overused bird to find in a name — ‘Iolani Palace (which I drive past on my way to work everyday) is the “Heavenly Hawk” Palace. The hawk is associated with royalty and known for flying higher than other birds. We thought this matched wild goose in my Chinese name, which is known for solitary flight. Interestingly, the buteo genus is technically a “buzzard”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzards — apprarently the negative connotations of this term are found only in the New World, and in the Old a ‘buzzard’ is simply a kind of hawk.

“Lama” is a bit more difficult to pin down. Like all good Hawaiian words, it has multiple meanings. My kumu picked it for me because it means to ‘shine’ or be ‘enlightened,’ which is meant to capture the fact that I am an educator (or just plain overeducated!). The moon is malama. Reduplicated you get malamalama “light of knowledge, clarity of thinking or explanation, elightenment, shining, radiant, clear.” The seal of the University of Hawaii features a torch and a book with the word ‘malamalama’ written on it. This is appropriate because lama can also mean a torch or lamp or “disopyros sanwicensis”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diospyros, the endemic species of ebony used for making these torches, which was also associated with medicinal qualities (sick people were often put in huts built of lama wood).

What my kumu _didn’t_ tell me is that “lama” is also the Hawaiian term (obviously taken directly from English) for rum, and by extension alcohol in general! “He kanaka inu lama” is a heavy drinker. I like this because it is strangely cognate with the Tok Pisin ‘spark’ (from the English ‘spark’) which means ‘drunk’ — both terms associate drunkeness with illumination and conflagration.

So depending on how you look at it I could be either “The Enlightened Hawk” or “The Drunk Buzzard” (technically this would be Ka’io’ona, but it translates better than “Rum Buzzard”). I think double/multiple/hidden (kaona) meaning is not only in keeping with my ‘serious/silly’ character, but also very Hawaiian. I’m just fine with it. Thanks very much to my kumu for coming up with such a wonderful new name for me!