Editorial: Cook or Kaawaloa?

What’s in a name? With apologies to Shakespeare, it turns out there’s quite a bit. That’s a universal truth, of course, but lately the cultural sensitivity around place names in Hawaii has become an especially potent issue.

There are reasons to be sensitive about the place name, “Captain Cook,” in particular. There’s been pushback to the notion of British explorer Capt. James Cook as Hawaii’s “discoverer,” given that indigenous Hawaiians already had been there for centuries.

Captain Cook on Hawaii island, near the Kealakekua Bay spot where Cook was killed in 1779, was so named at least partly because the Captain Cook Coffee Co. owned the property where the post office was built.

That is certainly a random reason to rename a large area that had a rich history dating back long before either the captain or that coffee company turned up. It was called Kaawaloa. According to the reference book, “Place Names of Hawaii,” the name signified the region’s awa (kava) plants that were carried to distant districts of the island. This was a home to Hawaiian chiefs.

House Concurrent Resolution 27 was introduced this legislative session to do the right thing for Kaawaloa: Restore the name given by its original inhabitants.

This isn’t something entirely in the hands of the state, however. HCR 27 takes the form of a request to be sent to the U.S. Census Bureau, because Captain Cook is a “census designated place,” and a change would take time.

Some did raise concern about the resolution negating Cook’s place in history, but others made the stronger counterargument that Cook’s legacy is well represented otherwise and that the monument would remain in place at the bay. More to the point, why should Native Hawaiian history, much longer and richer, cede its position to Cook?

House Resolution 100 and HCR 104 similarly propose to restore the name Paulaula to what’s now called Russian Fort Elizabeth Park on Kauai. There, the installation of a statue of the island’s King Kaumualii resurrected interest in the area’s pre-contact history and original name.

Not all name-change propositions are so clear-cut. Witness the upheaval among McKinley High School alumni who don’t want the school going back to “Honolulu High School.”

Generally, though, the balance now seems to tilt in favor of the Hawaiian names of old. In a place where the historical roots run so deep, that makes sense. Even McKinley grads may come around, in the end.