Colonialists did what colonialists do. They came, they claimed, they took what they wanted and they moved on. They left behind pieces of their sunken ships, and the new names they gave these old places — the same places Hawaiians had frequented for hundreds of years before Westerners arrived, places for which they had their own names, preserved in chants passed down through generations.
But the times are changing with a movement to restore the original names of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which since 2006 have been protected as part of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
It began from the ground up, according to Randy Kosaki, the monument’s deputy superintendent for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A handful of Native Hawaiian scientists started using the original Hawaiian names for these islands in their research papers, and it’s caught on.
Now, federal agencies like NOAA print maps with both Hawaiian and Western names. Pearl and Hermes Atoll is also labeled as Manawai, French Frigate Shoals as Lalo, Necker as Mokumanamana.
On NOAA’s most recent research expedition to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the mix of scientists from Hawaiʻi and the mainland almost exclusively used the Hawaiian names when discussing where they were diving and surveying the reefs. That wasn’t the case on trips even a few years earlier.