[Bulldawg Fan]

When did Hawaii become Hawai’i?

[TexasRedeye]

When did Hawaii become Hawai’i?

Oh, about 600 years ago IIRC.

[presently no screen name]

That was caused by a minor earthquake - things got tossed around a bit.

[Islander7]

When did Hawaii become Hawai’i?

That is the proper spelling, just as Oahu is actually O'ahu.

[Seizethecarp]

My son, who went off his meds and got my ex-wife to buy him a one-way trip to Hawaii, informed me that the “’” in Hawai’i denotes a “glottal stop”. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop Phonetic sound glottal stop Symbol (font) ʔ Symbol (image) IPA–number 113 Entity (decimal) ʔ Unicode (hex) U+0294 X-SAMPA ? Kirshenbaum ? Sound sample “The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English the feature is represented for example by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or Ê»okina in HawaiÊ»i among those using a preservative pronunciation of that name.”