Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for August 21, 2026
Archive · August 21, 2026
MOʻOPUNA
say it: moh-oh-POO-nah
Grandchild; a relative two generations later, whether by blood or by hānai; descendant, posterity. Literally moʻo, a succession or genealogical line, + puna, to spring up as water.
What it means
Moʻopuna is the word for a grandchild — and Pukui and Elbert let it reach further than that. Their entry reads: grandchild; great-niece or great-nephew; relatives two generations later, whether blood or adopted; descendant; posterity. One word holds the child on your lap and the whole line of people who come after you.
The two halves are worth sitting with. Moʻo means a succession or a series — most often a genealogical line, one link joined to the next. Puna means to spring up, the way water springs from the ground. Put them together and a moʻopuna is the place where the line comes back up into the light. Not the end of something. A spring.
Hawaiian counts generations forward with the same root: moʻopuna kuakahi, grandchild; moʻopuna kualua, great-grandchild; moʻopuna kuakolu, great-great-grandchild. The counting keeps going. The word does not run out.
How to use it
Three documented forms, straight from the dictionary and from Pukui’s proverb collection.
kāna moʻopuna
his grandchild — the example phrase given in the Pukui-Elbert entry itself. Swap the possessive and you have kaʻu moʻopuna, my grandchild.
Ka moʻopuna i ke alo
The grandchild in the presence. An ʻōlelo noʻeau said of a grandchild raised in a grandparent’s company — the one who was made much of, and usually the one who learned the family lore.
moʻopuna kualua
great-grandchild. The generational ladder runs kuakahi, kualua, kuakolu — first, second, third step out from you.
Why this word matters
Back in June we sat with kupuna — elder, ancestor, source. Moʻopuna is the other end of the same rope. You cannot really hold one without the other. A kupuna is a kupuna because there is a moʻopuna; a moʻopuna is one because somebody came before.
The word says a grandchild is not a branch at the end of the line. A grandchild is water coming back up.
That is the part that stays with us. English gives you descendant — a word built on descending, going down and away from the source. Hawaiian gives you puna, a spring. Same relationship, opposite direction. The line does not thin out as it travels. It surfaces.
And the definition is generous where it matters most: whether blood or adopted. Hānai families are not a footnote in the dictionary entry — they are inside the word. Two generations later, however that came to be, you are moʻopuna.
There is a practical version of all this. Every decision about land, water, and reef in Hawaiʻi gets argued in some form of the question: what is left for the moʻopuna? Not a sentimental question. A planning horizon. Our roots connect us — and they run both directions.
Sources
Definitions, etymology, and the phrase kāna moʻopuna are from the Hawaiian Dictionary by Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel H. Elbert, consulted through Nā Puke Wehewehe ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (wehewehe.org) and the Wehewehe Wikiwiki dictionaries at UH Hilo. The generational terms kuakahi, kualua, and kuakolu are from the same entries. Ka moʻopuna i ke alo (“the grandchild in the presence”) is from Mary Kawena Pukui, ʻŌlelo Noʻeau: Hawaiian Proverbs and Poetical Sayings.