Sjarif Goldstein: Name game among prep players sees a revival

Growing up in a family that subscribed to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, one of the recurring features of the sports section that stuck with me from my childhood was Bill Kwon’s annual column on the best names in high school football.

Kwon, a Honolulu newspaper legend who died six years ago this month, combed through every school’s roster each year in search of the coolest names in prep football. Sometimes there were themes — alliteration, names that had something in common. Other times it was just a fortuitous juxtaposition, like one of Kwon’s “Hall of Fame” names: Cash Petty. Sometimes it was just a neat combination, like Lohengrin Nahoopii. Other Kwon favorites included Datsun Nihipali, Paris France, Laborday Hunkin, Atomic Kane and Random Harvest.

Through my 20-plus years on the sports desk, I’ve thought of Kwon’s names column every time I came across a prep football name I thought sounded cool, like Kahuku cornerback/returner Stokes Nihipali-Botelho or Baldwin linebacker Kaluka Maiava or Saint Louis receiver Kaden Kamoe.

Well, now that I have a monthly column, I have the opportunity to revive this tradition. Along with scouring the rosters submitted to the Star-Advertiser this year — all posted at HawaiiPrepWorld.com — one of the things I did to prepare to write this column was to look up a few of Kwon’s old columns. I was taken aback by some of the names I came across.

Future MMA star Falaniko Vitale made Kwon’s 1990 list. A few years before that, Kahuku’s Taylor Wily drew a mention among a trio of players with similarly smart-sounding names (Campbell’s Andrew Sage and Damien’s Dutchie Bright were the others). Wily has gone on to a successful acting career. He was a regular on the “Hawaii Five-0” reboot and has carried the same character (Kamekona) over to the new “Magnum P.I.” for a handful of episodes.

The same year I saw Wily listed, I was surprised to see my friend and fellow Pearl CIty alumnus Rex Ito named. I wasn’t the only one surprised. Rex said he was unaware of it, despite his family subscribing to both the Star-Bulletin and the Advertiser when he was a kid. (“Twice a day — mo’ bettah,” you may recall from the bumper stickers.)

I looked at this year’s rosters before looking at Kwon’s old columns and one of the recurring themes was one I saw back in his columns: kids named after places. This year there’s Dakota Loucks of Kailua, Houston Torres of Saint Louis, Kansas Kealoha of Punahou, Lahaina Ah Sam of Mililani and a trio of Dallases — Tupou of Kalani and two at Campbell, Sagapolutele and Fonseca-Juan.

The year’s top first name also qualifies in that category: Kingston. There are at least seven players sharing their name with the capital of Jamaica (Farrington’s Jennings and Miles, Kaiser’s Castillo, Moanalua’s Ishimine, Waialua’s Pascual, Radford’s Kennedy and Roosevelt’s Kekauoha-Contemplo.

That last one is part of another trend I noticed on this year’s rosters. Over the past few decades, we’ve seen more hyphenated last names. Along with those, we’re starting to see multi-hyphenated last names and even hyphenated first names.

Nanakuli is Hawaii’s hyphenation capital, with Elijah Bright-Lee, Blaze Baltazar-Conselva, Cyprus Rombawa-Kai-Rivera and Prestaz Kaho’okele-Himalaya-Kutzen. Some of my other favorite hyphenates and double-hyphenates: Frankie Boy Quiban-Mahuka of Mililani, Sephaniah Lepaga-Talona of Campbell and Legend Lindley-Molina of Waialua.

That last one also qualifies among the most boldly named. When your parents name you Legend, you have no choice but to go on to do great things. Similarly, there’s Marvelous Seiuli of Waipahu, Maximus Justin Johnston of Farrington and Kahuku linebacker Maximum Fonoimoana, who at 195 pounds is a long way from the maximum for a football player but is only a sophomore and has time to grow into his name.

Perhaps the coolest name I saw this year was a hyphenated first name: Kanvas-Sway (Biggie) Palaylay of Kailua. That name checks all the boxes even before you consider his nickname included in parentheses. It’s got creative spelling, a cool real word and syllabic repetition, a hat trick of coolness. You can add in that the cool real word rhymes with the repeated syllable. That takes the name up another level. Definitely worthy of instant induction into my name Hall of Fame.

Another first-ballot Hall of Famer doubles down on the trend of seeing names with deep prep football history. Great football players often have brothers, cousins, sons and nephews who are great football players, so we’ve seen many of the same names pop up over the years: Noga, Tufono, Sagapolutele, Ah You, Tanuvasa. There’s yet another in the line of Agenhart Ellises, though the latest plays for Punahou rather than the traditional Kamehameha.

Well, Mililani has a player whose name recalls not just one storied football family but two: receiver Onosa’i Salanoa, who came into the weekend fifth among Open Division players in receiving yards despite being only a sophomore.

Salanoa’s uncles are Radford coach Fred and Thor, who won a national championship at BYU. Most Hawaii football fans know the name Onosa’i from Joe Onosa’i, the standout offensive lineman for the University of Hawaii, but Salanoa tells Star-Advertiser high school sports reporter and historian Paul Honda that he was named after Onosa’i Mageo Ni, a great-great-great grandfather on his mother’s side who was a chief in Pago Pago, American Samoa,.

Names can be melodic, and each language — Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Samoan, Tongan, the list goes on and on — contributes something different musically, so Hawaii’s diversity makes for a bounty of great names. I’ve got a list too long for this column, but allow me to squeeze in Kailua’s Clayton Quidashay; Kahuku’s Gemini Vendiola and Liona Lefau; ‘Iolani’s Jazz Priester; Nanakuli’s Mykenessy Conrad; Punahou’s appropriately named receivers Dash Watanabe and Chase Eveleth; and maybe the most mellifluous of them all, Kamehameha running back Sunrise Solatorio.

There are many, many more. I look forward to sharing them with you next year and beyond.