Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for May 17, 2026
Archive · May 17, 2026
PIKO
say it: PEE-koh
Bellybutton · Navel · Summit · Crown of the head · Center · End or border · Blood relative (figurative)
What it means
At its most everyday, piko is your bellybutton — the navel, the place on your body where you were once connected to your mother by the umbilical cord. That’s the meaning locals reach for first, and it’s the one we had in mind when we named Digital Piko.
From there, piko reaches outward. Figuratively, it means blood relative. Geographically, it means a summit — the piko of a mountain, the piko of a hill. On your body, the crown of the head is its own piko. So is the tip of an ear. The end of a rope. The border of a land. The center of a kōnane board. The place where a stem joins a leaf. Even the thatch above a doorway.
The thread running through all of it: piko is wherever meaning gathers at a single point. A center. A connection. A beginning. (All of this is documented in the Pukui-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary.)
How to use it
These constructions are all attested in the Pukui-Elbert dictionary, where piko o ke [noun] identifies the centermost point of that thing:
Why this word matters
The bellybutton is small. You don’t think about it much. But it’s the only mark on your body that records, permanently, that you came from someone — that you didn’t show up here alone.
Ask any local Hawaiʻi kid the question “where’s your piko?” and watch them poke their bellybutton. It’s the bellybutton-pointing game parents play with babies — the first time a small person hears the word, it’s in laughter, in a soft prompt from a mom or grandma.
Mary Kawena Pukui — the great Hawaiian scholar whose dictionary work we still rely on — documented a concept she called nā piko ʻekolu: the three piko of the body. The umbilical, connecting you back to your parents. The crown of the head (where the fontanelle once opened in infancy), connecting you upward to ancestors and the divine. And the third, connecting you forward to descendants yet unborn.
Three piko. Past, present, future — all running through one body.
That’s the meaning we built Digital Piko around. The spiral in the badge is a bellybutton. The brand is named for the simple, lived-in word every kid in Hawaiʻi knows — and for the deeper line of connection it carries. Our roots connect us.
Sources
Pukui, Mary Kawena, and Samuel H. Elbert. Hawaiian Dictionary, revised and enlarged edition (University of Hawaiʻi Press). The three-piko concept (nā piko ʻekolu) is documented in Pukui’s body of work on Hawaiian belief and is summarized by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and the Native Hawaiian health literature. The dictionary lookup tool at wehewehe.org aggregates Pukui-Elbert and other authoritative dictionaries — a great place to verify anything here for yourself.