Ohana

For other uses, see (disambiguation)}}}.

Part of Hawaiian culture, ohana means family in an extended sense of the term including both blood-related or extended. It emphasizes that family and friends are bound together and members must cooperate and remember one another. The term has the same origins as (and usage is similar to) the New Zealand Māori term "whanau".

In Hawaiian, the word is "‘ohana" with the leading inverted apostrophe indicating a glottal stop or "‘okina."

In contemporary Hawaiian life, an "ohana unit" is a part of a house that may contain a grandparent or may be rented to the general public. Ohana is one of the themes of Lilo & Stitch and is mentioned occasionally in Baywatch.

The root word "oha" refers to the root or corm of the kalo, or taro plant (the staple "staff of life" in Hawaii), which Kanaka Maoli (and by the way, maoli and maori are related words) consider to be their cosmological ancestor.

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