Royal Titles and Style in Hawaii

The Hawaiian language was not committed to writing until 1820, and the remote archipelago appears to have experienced no sustained external contact for approximately seventeen generations (roughly 350 years) prior to the arrival of European vessels in the 1770s. In this context, there was little conceptual need to distinguish between lands, islands, and continents: no continents were known, and all landmasses were, by definition, islands. Nor did sharply differentiated classes of hereditary nobility emerge. Instead, members of the ruling elite were collectively designated by the generic term aliʻi.

Where greater precision was required, qualifiers and compound expressions were used to distinguish, for example, the scope of political or territorial authority, or an individual's relative standing within the nobility as determined by parental rank and lineage. Thus, an aliʻi kūʻokoʻa denoted an independent ruler, while aliʻi nui (a term whose antiquity is debated) referred to a principal or paramount aliʻi. Territorial authority was expressed through compounds such as aliʻi ʻai moku, indicating an aliʻi who enjoyed the rights and exercised the responsibilities of rule over a major land division, and aliʻi ʻai ahupuaʻa, denoting authority over a smaller territorial unit. Distinctions of subordination and lineage were likewise marked: aliʻi poʻe kauā referred to subordinate nobles; aliʻi papa to individuals born of a noble mother and a commoner father; and kaukaualiʻi to nobles of intermediate rank, typically the offspring of a high-ranking father and a lower-ranking mother, and others. Such personal ranks determined the degree of kapu (taboo) and veneration.

In practice, however, formal titles were frequently omitted altogether and only indirectly indicated. This practice persisted well into the 19th century, as illustrated by the proclamations announcing successions to the office of Kuhina Nui in 1832 and 1839, which referred not to the title itself but to "the office formerly held by" or "the authority hitherto possessed by" the predecessor (Hawaiian: "ka noho ʻana a kuʻu"). Similarly, in the Constitutions of 1840 and 1852 the sovereign is designated simply as ke Aliʻi nui, with the qualifier nui often omitted where the context—particularly the explicit naming of the polity—made the meaning unambiguous.

In international correspondence, by contrast, a more explicit and formal style was required. Accordingly, the ruler of the archipelago was initially styled using the name applied to the Hawaiian Islands by Captain James Cook in 1778, appearing as "King of the Sandwich Islands" or, in early English usage, as "His Majesty Tamaahama, King of These Islands", and in Spanish diplomatic correspondence as "Su Magestad Tamamea Rey de estas Yslas" [1]. By 1810 such formulations were well established, reflecting the conceptual equivalent of "kēia Pae ʻĀina" ("these lands"). Following the introduction of a standardized orthography in 1820, international usage gradually shifted toward the indigenous toponym, with the sovereign styled as "King of the Hawaiian Islands", corresponding to "ke Aliʻi o kō Hawaiʻi Pae ʻĀina" (literally, "the aliʻi, or ruler, of the Hawaiian lands").

As part of the broader westernization of government and administration following the promulgation of the first constitution in 1840, the neologism mōʻī came into secular and political use as a designation specifically for king or majesty. The term—originally coined by Western missionaries for religious contexts—can be variously analyzed as a compound of mō- (either a variant of the stative prefix mā-, indicating a quality or state, or a contraction of moʻo, "succession" or "lineage") and ʻī ("supreme", "great", or "best"). The earliest attested use of mōʻī in a formal governmental context appears in a translated letter prepared in 1842 by the officially appointed translator Gerrit P. Judd (Ka Nonanona, No. 8, 5 Sep 1843, pp. 37-39; Stokes 1932, p. 5). The term was still explicitly equated with "majesty" in 1843 (British and Foreign State Papers, 31:1023-1035; Ka Nonanona, No. 20, 7 Mar 1843, pp.97-100).

The royal style was accordingly expanded to "ka Mōʻī, N.N., ke Aliʻi o kō Hawaiʻi Pae ʻĀina" ("His Majesty, N.N., the King of the Hawaiian Islands"), a formulation that became standard and continued to appear in the titles of the session laws, published from 1846 onward, until the end of the monarchy [2].

The Organic Acts of 1846 prescribed a highly formal style for official paperwork, describing the monarch as "ke Aliʻi nui a ke Akua i kōna lokomaikaʻi i hoʻonoho ai (aʻi) maluna o kō Hawaiʻi Pae ʻĀina" — "the great ruler whom God, in His grace, has placed over the Hawaiian Islands." This sacral formula corresponds to the British "By the Grace of God" style. In proclamations and commissions, a shorter form — "ma ka Lokomaikaʻi o ke Akua, ke Aliʻi o kō Hawaiʻi Pae ʻĀina"which is "By the Grace of God, King of the Hawaiian Islands" — became customary.

In constitutionally prescribed legislative enactments, mōʻī replaced aliʻi as the primary term for "king" beginning in 1864. Although the artificial distinction between "king" and "majesty" was never applied with complete consistency in statutory language, the Constitution of 1864—and more markedly that of 1887—effectively reversed earlier usage. Whereas mōʻī had initially been equated with "majesty", it now functioned as the term for "king", while aliʻi was increasingly employed where the English version had "majesty". The appropriate feminine form, mōʻīwahine, appears in individual proclamations and commissions issued under the female sovereign between 1891 and 1893; however, the legally or constitutionally mandated formulae were not amended to reflect this gendered usage.