The Hawaiian word for June 16, 2026

Archive · June 16, 2026

KEIKI

say it: KAY-kee

Child — a son or daughter, the young ones; also a descendant, and the new shoot a kalo plant sends up.

What it means

In the Pukui-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary, keiki is a wide word: child, offspring, descendant, son, boy, youngster — and, carried out to the animal world, the young of an animal too: a calf, a colt, a cub.

But the meaning that opens the word all the way up is the last one the dictionary lists: a keiki is also the shoot or sucker of a plant — most of all the young offshoot a kalo (taro) plant pushes up from its base. That is not a footnote. It is the whole Hawaiian idea of a child held in a single image: new growth rising from the parent stock, carrying it forward.

So keiki is never only “a small person.” It is offspring in the fullest sense — the next length of a line that runs back through the kūpuna and on through everyone not yet born.

How to use it

Keiki rarely travels alone — it pairs with another word to say exactly which child you mean:

keiki kāne — “boy; son.” Keiki plus kāne (male). The matching kaikamahine names a girl or daughter.

keiki hānai — “a foster or adopted child.” From hānai, to feed and raise; a keiki hānai is a child taken in and brought up as one’s own — an old and honored relationship in Hawaiʻi.

keiki hānau o ka ʻāina — “a native-born child of the land.” Literally a child born of the ʻāina — the phrase for someone whose roots are in the place itself.

Why this word matters

Five days ago the word was lei — the garland you wear close, the one thing you do not set down and forget. Hawaiian keeps a saying that braids that word straight into today’s:

He lei poina ʻole ke keiki.

“A beloved child is a lei never forgotten.” Pukui records it among the ʻōlelo noʻeau, and it says plainly how a keiki is held — not as a possession but as a lei, woven from the love of the parents and the kūpuna before them, worn with pride and never laid aside.

Hold onto the other picture inside the word, too: the kalo shoot rising from the parent plant. A keiki is growth, continuation, the line carried one length further — both rooted in what came before and reaching past it.

That is why the word sits at the center of so much island life — and at the center of why Digital Piko exists. What this brand earns goes to lift up the keiki of these islands. They are the lei we do not forget, and the new shoot we are all here to help grow.

Sources

Definition of keiki (“child, offspring, descendant, son, boy, youngster; young of an animal; shoot or sucker, as of taro”) and the compounds keiki kāne (“boy, son”), keiki hānai (“adopted or foster child”), and keiki hānau o ka ʻāina (“native-born, a child of the land”) from Mary Kawena Pukui & Samuel H. Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary (1986), via wehewehe.org. The ʻōlelo noʻeau “He lei poina ʻole ke keiki” (“A beloved child is a lei never forgotten”) is recorded by Mary Kawena Pukui, ʻŌlelo Noʻeau: Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings (Bishop Museum Press, 1983). Diacritics (ʻokina, kahakō) shown as in the sources.

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