[Procyon]

Kapiʻolani It is interesting that the person typing the birth certificate, (assuming they were Hawaiian or of Hawaiian descent) did not type the name of the hospital as shown above. Why would they not have included the apostrophe between the letter "i" and the letter "o". Can one of our Freepers from Hawaii explain this error?

The use of the apostrophe in Kapiolani and Hawaii (Hawai'i) is an affectation created by a new orthography. In my personal experience in the Pacific in the seventies, all the Pacific Island languages got a makeover, the spelling becoming more phonetic, So Hawaii pronounced by non-native speakers as Huh-WHY is now commonly spoken as Hah-VHY-ee. The apostrophe makes the preceding vowel cut off short. I the past Americans spelled Puerto Rico as Porto Rico, even though native Spanish speakers always pronounced it correctly.

[Mr. Wright]

Thank you for the clarification