The ‘Ōlelo Hawai’i word “mo‘olelo” most often gets used to mean story, but it can also mean other things, such as history, legend, genealogy, tradition, and so on.  

When you look at the words that make up “mo‘olelo,” you can get a better sense of how Hawaiians understood these things.  It is made up of “mo‘o” and “‘ōlelo.”  Mo‘o refers to lizard but the meaning is a little different when combined with ‘ōlelo. If you ever see a mo‘o’s skeleton, you will see how its backbone is made up of similar yet slightly different bones that line up one after the other.  That is why “mo‘o” also means succession.  It is a series of things that come one after the other, like points of a mountain ridge, something else that is called a mo‘o.

“‘Ōlelo” is the Hawaiian word for language or speaking, and may be connected to the word for tongue: “alelo.”  When you put the meanings of “mo‘o” and “‘ōlelo” together, you see that “mo‘olelo” means something like “succession of talk” or “succession of language.”  This refers to how stories were told in traditional times in Hawai‘i.

This page will be used for historical stories, articles of the Las Vegas Hawaiian Civic Club, provide aspects of legacy, and to be a point of reference for all to share.