The short version
- The ʻokina (ʻ) is a consonant and the kahakō (ā) marks a long vowel. Both are part of correct Hawaiian spelling.
- Most people search without them, so your pages should be findable either way.
- Use correct spelling in visible copy where it fits your brand, keep URLs in plain letters, and list both spellings in structured data.
- Use the real ʻokina character (U+02BB), not an apostrophe or a curly quote.
- Paste your copy into the checker below to find and fix place names.
Walk down Kalākaua Avenue and you will see Hawaiian spelled three ways: correctly, with the ʻokina and kahakō; with an apostrophe standing in for the ʻokina; and with no marks at all. All three show up in search, in Google Maps and in AI answers. For a Hawaii business, that raises a practical question: which spelling should your website use, and does it affect how you rank?
The honest answer is that it depends where on the page, and that you can get the benefits of correct spelling without giving up visibility for people who type "Hawaii" on a phone keyboard. Here is how we handle it.
What the ʻokina and kahakō are
Hawaiian is one of the two official languages of the State of Hawaiʻi, alongside English, since the 1978 state constitutional convention. Two marks matter for spelling.
The ʻokina is a glottal stop, the catch in the middle of "uh-oh." It is a consonant, not punctuation, and it changes both pronunciation and meaning. Its Unicode character is U+02BB, the modifier letter turned comma: ʻ.
The kahakō is a macron over a vowel (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū). It lengthens the vowel and, again, can change meaning.
Put together, the state and island name is written Hawaiʻi, and places like Kāneʻohe, Līhuʻe and Waikīkī carry both marks.
Does Google treat Hawaii and Hawaiʻi the same?
Often, but not always, and not identically. Search engines are generally good at recognizing that a word with diacritics and the same word without them are related, so a page that says Hawaiʻi can rank for "Hawaii" searches. But results for the two spellings are not guaranteed to match, and the gap can be larger for less common place names.
Rather than take anyone's word for it, including ours, test your own terms. Search your main phrase both ways, for example "Kaneohe plumber" and "Kāneʻohe plumber," in a private browser window, and compare the results and the map pack. If they are nearly identical, spelling is a style choice for that term. If they differ, you want both forms represented on the page.
Where to use which spelling
| Place on your site | What we recommend | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Body copy | Correct Hawaiian spelling, with the plain form used naturally once where it reads well | Respectful and accurate, while still matching how people type |
| Page titles and headings | Your choice; test both. Many businesses use the plain form in the title and correct spelling in the heading | Titles are matched against typed searches most directly |
| URLs and slugs | Plain ASCII letters only, for example /kaneohe-plumber/ | Diacritics in URLs get percent-encoded and are easy to mistype or break when shared |
| Google Business Profile name | Exactly as your real-world name appears on your signage and paperwork | Google's guidelines ask the profile name to match the name you actually use |
| Structured data | Your name as used, plus the other spelling in alternateName | Tells search engines and AI assistants both forms are one business |
| Image alt text | Describe the image naturally; spelling follows your body copy | Alt text is for people using screen readers first |
What this means for AI answers
AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity decide what to recommend partly by recognizing that the same business is described consistently in many places. If one directory lists "Hawaiʻi Kai Plumbing," another lists "Hawaii Kai Plumbing LLC" and a third uses an apostrophe, the assistant has to guess whether those are the same company.
You make that guess easy by being consistent where you control it and connecting the variants where you cannot. Use one primary form of your name everywhere you can edit it, and add the others as alternate names in your structured data. Our Hawaii AI search optimization guide covers the rest of what assistants look for.
How to type and code it correctly
Use the right character
The most common mistake is not leaving the ʻokina out; it is using the wrong character. A straight apostrophe (') or a right single quotation mark (’) looks similar but is a different character, may be read aloud differently by screen readers, and can be "smart-quoted" into the wrong shape by word processors. The left single quotation mark (‘) looks almost identical and is a common substitute, but the correct character is U+02BB.
On your devices
Apple devices include a Hawaiian keyboard you can add in keyboard settings, and recent versions of Windows offer a Hawaiian keyboard layout too. Once added, the ʻokina and vowels with kahakō are a keystroke away.
In your website code
- Type the character directly in UTF-8 pages, or use the HTML entity
ʻ. - Mark longer passages written in Hawaiian with
lang="haw"so browsers and screen readers handle them properly. - Check that your web fonts include the ʻokina and macron vowels. If a font lacks them, the browser substitutes another font for just those characters, which can look uneven.
ʻOkina and kahakō checker
Paste a paragraph, page title or listing description. The checker finds common Hawaiian place names, flags missing or substituted marks and gives you a corrected version to copy. It runs entirely in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere.
A note on our own name
You will notice that this site mostly writes "Hawaii" without the ʻokina, including in our brand, our URLs and our page titles. That is a deliberate choice for an English-language business name and for matching how most customers type, and it is exactly the kind of decision this guide is meant to help you make on purpose rather than by accident. In articles like this one, and in place names where accuracy matters most, we use the full spelling.
Put it into practice
Start with your Google Business Profile name, then your top five pages, then your structured data. If you would like help, our Hawaii local SEO team does this as part of every profile rebuild, and our Hawaii SEO company overview explains how it fits into the bigger picture.
Quick answers
Should my business name include the ʻokina?
Use whatever your business actually uses on its signage and paperwork. Google asks that your profile name match your real-world name. If you use the ʻokina in real life, use it online, and list the plain spelling as an alternate name in your structured data.
Can I put the ʻokina in my URL?
It is technically possible, but we recommend plain letters in URLs. Diacritics get percent-encoded, can break when copied into emails or texts and are hard for customers to type.
Is an apostrophe an acceptable substitute for the ʻokina?
It is common, but it is a different character. The correct ʻokina is Unicode U+02BB. Using the right character is more accurate and more consistent for screen readers and search engines.
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