No one is exactly sure when or how Hawai'i got the name Hawai'i. Historians suggest that the name Hawai'i came from the ancient Polynesians' word for homeland. Hawaiki and Ohwyhee. "HA", in Hawai`i, is the "breathe of life". There is no real English translation "WAI" is "fresh water", or "The water of life", or "living waters". "I" is, for one thing, the concept of a supreme God, or conscienceness. If you put these all together, Hawai`i, actually pronounced ha-vwy-ee (with the e being completely separate), means..... God breathed life to the waters. A hui hou. Originally the Europeans called them the Sandwich Islands. In Tahiti, it is Ra'iatea, although that name is new; its old name was Havai'i. In the Cook Islands it is 'Avaiki; the Maoris of Aotearoa (New Zealand) have Hawaiki; and in Samoa it is Savai'i. Those are just a few alterations of the name, but there are probably more plus, as I said, the name of the ancient homeland. #hawaii #savaii #havaiki #avariki (Taken with instagram)