Honolulu Star-Advertiser © Susan Scott
November 9, 2001
Knowing the local names of things in Hawaii is a crucial part of living and visiting here. If you don’t know the name of that beach down the hill that’s good for snorkeling, can’t remember humuhumunukunukuapuaa and call ahi tuna fish, you’re not connecting with the place or its people.
That fact was driven home to me years ago when I took some marine biology classes at UH and found myself missing the gist of half the conversations.
After I hunkered down with the Hawaiian Dictionary and memorized the local names for fish and invertebrates, things cleared up quite a bit.
But learning the names and locations of shorelines and surf sites was another story. When people told me they surfed at Threes, I only knew they went somewhere in Waikiki. When I heard about the tame turtles of the North Shore’s Laniakea, I didn’t know where to drive to see them. I really wanted to know these things, but there was no place to look them up.
Fortunately, John Clark, deputy chief of the Honolulu Fire Department and author of five books about Hawaii’s beaches, has fixed that. Since 1972 he has been collecting information specifically about the names of local marine sites. The result is the book of my dreams, recently published by the University of Hawaii Press, called “Hawaii Place Names: Shores, Beaches and Surf Sites.”
Where is Threes? It’s the third surf site on the reef that begins at the Sheraton-Waikiki and ends at the Kaiser Channel. The Kaiser Channel? That’s the boat channel dredged through the reef in 1955 by Henry Kaiser during the development of the Hilton Hawaiian Village.
And now I finally have an explanation for Laniakea: It’s the section of beach between Lauhulu Stream and Pohaku Loa Way. That’s easy. I just look up Pohaku Loa Way in the map book and I’m there.
But there’s a lot more to John’s book than just knowing where to go. He also includes the mo’olelo, or stories, behind the names. These first-person accounts from John’s interviews aren’t only valuable pieces of Hawaii history, they’re great fun to read.
Take Laniakea. In the 1920s a man called Sheriff Rose built a cottage in the area, naming it Laniakea after a nearby spring (no one knows how the spring got that name, which means wide sky). Rose wrote Laniakea on a sign and hung it on the side of his house.
Thirty years later, in 1955, a filmmaker climbed a tower near the house to film surfers riding the big waves there. While on the tower, the producer noticed the sheriff’s sign still on the cottage — and the surf site and beach had a name.
HERE’S another one I always wondered about: Why is the North Shore’s YMCA camp called Camp Erdman?
Sadly, it’s a memorial. In 1932, Harold Erdman, 26, died there after falling from a horse during a polo game. The young man was the nephew of the land’s owner, Walter Dillingham, who after the tragedy donated the land to the YMCA in Erdman’s name.
On a lighter note, there’s a beach, dive site, surf site and rock at the east end of Makua Beach called “Pray for Sex.” In the 1960s those words were painted on a large limestone rock there as a play on the popular saying “Pray for Surf.” The name stuck.
John tells 2,500 stories in his book, and I intend to read them all. But later. Right now I’m kayaking from Ka’ohao to Two Humps to check out Dog Bowls.