Hawaii Questions

Jake wrote:
How was Hawaii named?
Was the island already named before it became a state in the United States of America?

To answer the second question:
Hawaii was named Hawaii several hundred years before it was made into a state.

According to Hawaiian legend, Hawaii Loa was a Polynesian chief who sailed more than 2,400 miles across open water from the Marquesas Islands, in the South Pacific near Tahiti, to discover the Hawaiian Islands in the A.D. 400′s. Upon his return home he organized an expedition to return to explore and settle on the islands. He settled on the what is now the Big Island of Hawaii named in his honor. His sons Kaua?i, O?ahu, and Maui, settled on the islands that now bear their names.

The replica voyaging canoe Hawai’iloa, was named after the legendary navigator. This canoe was built and sailed to prove that Polynesians were bold, intentional navigators, not the hapless voyagers blown off course that some theories of Polynesian migration claimed. The canoe Hawai?iloa is now docked at Honolulu Harbor. It is often sailed on long voyages throughout the Pacific Ocean in hopes of studying voyaging techniques used in antiquity.