Hapa
Sign in to saveHapa () is a Hawaiian word for someone of multiracial ancestry. In Hawaii, the word refers to any person of mixed ethnic heritage, regardless of the specific mixture. The term is used for any multiracial person of partial East Asian, Southeast Asian, or Pacific Islander mixture in California. In what can be characterized as trans-cultural diffusion or the wave model, this latter usage has also spread to Massachusetts, Ohio, and Oregon. Both uses are concurrent.
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Article
12 sectionsContents
- Historical and Hawaiian usage
- Controversy
- In popular culture
- See also
- Notes
- Citations
- Sources
- Books
- Journal articles
- Articles
- Videos
- External links
Hapa () is a Hawaiian word for someone of multiracial ancestry. In Hawaii, the word refers to any person of mixed ethnic heritage, regardless of the specific mixture. The term is used for any multiracial person of partial East Asian, Southeast Asian, or Pacific Islander mixture in California. In what can be characterized as trans-cultural diffusion or the wave model, this latter usage has also spread to Massachusetts, Ohio, and Oregon. Both uses are concurrent.
== Historical and Hawaiian usage == thumb|upright|Hapa Haole (No. 206) by Grace Hudson, 1901The word "hapa" entered the Hawaiian language in the early 1800s, with the arrival of Christian missionaries who instituted a Hawaiian alphabet and developed curriculum for schools. It is a transliteration of the English word "half," but quickly came to mean "part," which could be combined with numbers to form fractions. For example, hapalua is half, hapahā is one-fourth, and hapanui means majority.