Grandma in Hawaiian: Tūtū and What It Really Means
Grandma in Hawaiian is tūtū, and grandmother in Hawaiian is the same word — but tūtū on its own is not female. It means grandparent, grandaunt, granduncle, or anyone of that generation, so a grandfather is tūtū too. When you need to be specific, grandma is tūtū wahine and grandpa is tūtū kāne. The dictionary forms are kupuna wahine and kūkū wahine. That one fact — that tūtū covers both — is the thing most name lists get wrong.
Tūtū is the everyday word, and it is not gendered
If you have heard one Hawaiian grandparent word, it is this one, and you have probably heard it used for a grandmother and assumed it was the female form. It isn’t.
The Wehewehe Wikiwiki Hawaiian dictionaries — the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo’s online home for Pukui and Elbert’s Hawaiian Dictionary and several others — give tūtū as grandparent, with tūtū kāne for grandpa and tūtū wahine for grandma. Wahine is the word for woman or female; kāne is man or male. So the gender lives in the second word, not the first.
This is why you will hear a whole family call two different people Tūtū and mean a grandmother and a grandfather. In practice most families simply say Tūtū to whoever is in front of them, and reach for Tūtū Wahine or Tūtū Kāne only when they need to tell somebody which one they mean.
Kūkū, and why the dictionary spells it differently
Look up “grandmother” in the English-to-Hawaiian side of Pukui and Elbert and you get four answers: kupuna wahine, tūtū, kūkū, kūkū wahine.
The one that surprises people is kūkū, because it is the head word and tūtū is listed under it. Pukui and Elbert define kūkū as “granny, grandma, grandpa; granduncle, grandaunt; any relative or close friend of grandparent’s generation,” note that it is “often said affectionately,” and add in the entry itself that it is “usually pronounced tūtū.” They also make a small historical observation worth knowing before you put it on a mug: it is “apparently a new word as it has not been noted in legends and chants.”
So kūkū and tūtū are the same word, written as the dictionary has it and as everybody actually says it. If you are choosing a grandma name, tūtū is the living spelling.
Kupuna is a title, not a grandma name
Kupuna is the formal word, and it is the one to be careful with.
Pukui and Elbert give kupuna as “grandparent, ancestor, relative or close friend of the grandparent’s generation, grandaunt, granduncle,” and a second sense: “starting point, source.” The plural is kūpuna — mai nā kūpuna mai, from the ancestors.
That second meaning is the whole point. Kupuna carries ancestry and authority, not cosiness, and in Hawaiʻi today it is used as a term of respect for elders generally — the kūpuna of a community, the kūpuna consulted on a decision. It is not the word a two-year-old shouts across a car park. If you want the respectful register for a card or a dedication, kupuna wahine is right. For the name the grandchildren use every day, tūtū is right.
Moʻopuna: the word at the other end
The matching word for what you are to her is moʻopuna — grandchild, and by extension “relatives two generations later, whether blood or adopted; descendant; posterity.”
There is a phrase in that entry I have thought about ever since I read it: moʻopuna i ke alo, glossed as a beloved grandchild raised by a grandparent, and literally “grandchild in the presence.” Hawaiian counts generations downward in the same word — Andrews’ 1865 dictionary lists moʻopuna kuakahi for a grandchild, moʻopuna kualua for a great-grandchild and moʻopuna kuakolu for a great-great-grandchild, so the great-grandmother question answers itself by adding to the child’s word rather than the elder’s. That is a different logic from the one our great-grandma names run on, and a nicer one.
The ʻokina and the kahakō change the word
If you take one thing from this page other than tūtū, take this: the marks are letters, not decoration.
Hawaiian uses exactly two, and the Historic Hawaiʻi Foundation puts it plainly — “Hawaiian diacritical marks comprise just two symbols: the glottal stop (ʻokina) and the macron (kahakō),” and “not only do the ʻokina and kahakō change the sound of a word, they often end up changing its meaning.” Their example is the one to keep: pau is completed, paʻu is soot, paʻū is damp or soaked, and pāʻū is a woman’s skirt. Four different words, one string of letters.
The University of Hawaiʻi’s own Hawaiian language guidance is equally direct about the ʻokina: it is “a specific punctuation mark, and not a single quotation mark, accent grave or ‘tick mark.’” The character is ʻ — it leans the other way from an apostrophe.
Practically, for a grandma name: the kahakō in tūtū sits on both vowels, and both are held long. If your keyboard will not make ā ē ī ō ū and ʻ, that is a solvable problem — every phone and computer will do it from the keyboard settings — and it is worth solving before you have it engraved.
Using it if your family is not Hawaiian
This is the question that actually brings people here, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a shrug.
Tūtū belongs to a living language spoken by a people whose language was suppressed within living memory, and it comes with a set of meanings — kupuna, moʻopuna, generations counted downward — that are not just vocabulary. If you have Hawaiian family, Hawaiian ancestry, or you are raising grandchildren in Hawaiʻi where Tūtū is simply what a grandmother is called, use it, and spell it correctly. If your only connection is a holiday you loved, it is worth asking honestly whether you want a Hawaiian name or a Hawaiian-sounding one, because those are different things and only one of them is yours to take.
None of that is a scolding. It is the same conversation the whole heritage grandma names hub exists to have, and the answer is usually the one grandmothers reach anyway: use the word your family actually has a claim to, and get it right. If you want a name with a soft, warm sound and no claim on someone else’s language, grandma in Japanese and grandma in Korean raise exactly the same question in their own words.
FAQ: grandma in Hawaiian
How do you say grandma in Hawaiian?
Tūtū, and more precisely tūtū wahine, since tūtū on its own means grandparent of either sex. Both vowels carry a kahakō and are held long. Kupuna wahine and kūkū wahine are the other dictionary forms.
What is the difference between tūtū and kupuna?
Tūtū is the affectionate family word; kupuna is the formal one. Pukui and Elbert define kupuna as grandparent, ancestor and also “starting point, source,” and in Hawaiʻi it is used as a term of respect for elders in general — closer to a title than a nickname.
Is tūtū used for a grandfather as well?
Yes. Tūtū covers both, and the sex is carried by the second word: tūtū kāne for a grandfather, tūtū wahine for a grandmother. Plenty of families just say Tūtū to both and let context do the work.
What do Hawaiians call a grandchild?
Moʻopuna, which also covers great-nieces and nephews and descendants generally. The phrase moʻopuna i ke alo — literally “grandchild in the presence” — describes a beloved grandchild raised by a grandparent.
Do I really need the ʻokina and the kahakō?
Yes. They are letters. Leaving them off can change the word into a different one entirely, which is why the University of Hawaiʻi insists the ʻokina is a specific mark rather than an apostrophe, and why pau, paʻu, paʻū and pāʻū are four separate words.
