Hiawatha: Name Meaning, Origin & Popularity

At a Glance: Name: Hiawatha – Origin: Onondaga (Iroquois/Haudenosaunee) – Gender: Boy – Pronunciation: hy-uh-WAH-thuh


Hiawatha is an Onondaga (Iroquois/Haudenosaunee) boy's name. It appears in our list of 200+ Native American Baby Names Honoring Indigenous Heritage.

Meaning & Origin of Hiawatha

Origin: Onondaga (Iroquois/Haudenosaunee).

A common claim: Widely said to mean 'He who combs' (from a legend about combing snakes from the sorcerer Tadodaho's hair). Actually: The 'combs' translation comes from one retelling of the Deganawidah/Hiawatha legend, not a settled linguistic translation -- scholars have proposed other, differing glosses. The popular image of Hiawatha as an Ojibwe folk hero also comes from Longfellow's poem, which borrowed this real Iroquois statesman's name but grafted it onto unrelated Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) legends.

Source: Wiktionary.

How to Pronounce Hiawatha

Phonetic: hy-uh-WAH-thuh   IPA: /ˌhaɪəˈwɒθə/

Popularity of Hiawatha

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration birth-name data, 1911–2004.

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