# Talk:Kaʻiminaʻauao

What does her name mean?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 20:52, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I do not speak the language, but a quick look at the {{Hawaiian Dictionaries}} shows this is quite a case where the diacritic placement is critical. I think it might be something like ka ʻimi na ʻauao which would mean something like "the search for enlightenment" but there probably are other meanings. Sources would be need of course with citations.  A quick search turned up http://www.onipaa.org/resources/geneology_about_1.pdf which uses the two 'okina, and  http://www.kaimi.org/ which is a current organization with a similar name which translates as "the search for truth" so that might be close to the essence. W Nowicki (talk) 01:29, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Is it two okinas or one okina? --KAVEBEAR (talk) 02:27, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
The problem is that 'okina where not printed in the 1840s since the typesetting technology was a bit before Unicode. You had to hear how the word was spoken. At that time, the only people who read Hawaiian spoke it first, so did not need the pronouciation help. But looking more in the dictionary, kai mina ʻauoa would be even hard to make sense out of; something like "enlightened sorrow water" which would indeed be an odd name. It looks like my first link above is a modern typographic version of Queen Lil's appendix giving her own family, published by her estate. She should know how to spell her sister's name. So I would say two. W Nowicki (talk) 21:11, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Need to expand the funeral section