The Place Names of Wailua
In Hawaiian tradition a place name is not only a label. Names carry history, genealogy, events, and instruction. To know the names of a place is to know a great deal about what happened there and how people were meant to conduct themselves in it.
Wailua holds an unusual concentration of them.
Wailuanuiahoʻāno
The name of the district itself. It is commonly rendered as great sacred Wailua, and it distinguishes this Wailua from other places of the same name in the islands.
This was the principal seat of Kauaʻi’s aliʻi nui. The ahupuaʻa ran from the summit region down the river to the sea, and the sites within a mile and a half of the river mouth make up what is now designated the Wailua Complex of Heiau, a National Historic Landmark since 1962.
Hikinaakalā
The rising of the sun. The heiau of this name sits at the mouth of the Wailua River, where the first light striking Kauaʻi from the eastern sea reaches the shore. The dawn was met here with prayers and chants.
Hauola
A puʻuhonua, a place of refuge, associated with Hikinaakalā. Puʻuhonua were places where a person who reached them could be absolved and protected. The name is connected to concepts of life and healing.
Holoholokū
Also called Kalaeokamanu, the crest of the bird. Understood to be the oldest heiau on Kauaʻi. Beside it are the Pōhaku Hoʻohānau and the Pōhaku Piko, the birthing stone and the umbilical stone, where women of the highest rank came to give birth. A chief born at Wailua carried a standing that a chief born elsewhere did not.
Malae and Poliʻahu
Malae, on the south side of the river, is the largest surviving heiau on Kauaʻi. Poliʻahu sits on a bluff above the river to the north. Both are traditionally attributed to the Menehune.
Kuamoʻo
The backbone. The ridge road running up from the river toward the uplands, connecting the coastal sites to those above.
Reading the landscape
Taken together the names describe a system rather than a collection of points: a river mouth where the day begins, a refuge beside it, a place where chiefs were born, temples ascending the ridge, and a route connecting them. The relationships between the names are part of the information.