Hawai
ʻi is said to have been named for
Hawaiʻiloa, the legendary
Polynesian navigator who first discovered it. Other accounts attribute the name to the legendary realm of
Hawaiki, a place from which the Polynesian people are said to have originated (see also
Manua), the place where they go in the afterlife, the realm of the gods and goddesses. Captain
James Cook, the European who claimed to have discovered the Hawaiian Islands and called them the "Sandwich Islands", was killed on the Big Island at
Kealakekua Bay.
Hawai
ʻi was the home island of Pai
ʻea Kamehameha, later known as
Kamehameha the Great. Kamehameha united most of the Hawaiian islands under his rule in 1795, after several years of war, and gave the
kingdom and the
island chain the name of his native island.
