Good afternoon gentlemen. I am doing a surprise project for my father and am looking for the translation of "Hot Rod" into Hawaiian. Can anyone help? I tried translator and it is not going well. I have two pics of his old hot rod taken in the 40's. He always told me that the words painted on the hood side were "Hot Rod" in Hawaiian. I believe in the one of the close-up I see the word Wela (its cut off). In my translation searches Wela is hot. But the first word painted, it starts with the letter H but I cannot make out the rest. Thanks, Duane
There is a group of rodder's on the big island that does a cruise there every other year. Do a search for that here, and find the club's name. Then go from there. Gary
Since the Hawaiian language has only a total of thirteen letters, a large percentage of words actually have double, triple, or quadruple meanings. There won't be anything extremely definitive. Close, but no cigar ...
There won't be any words in that language for hot rod. The language and culture are based on island life. There are two listed words for hot in Hawaiian Wela, hahana they probably differ depending on the use of the word as in weather or spicey for instance, I didn't research farther then the translation. The word they use for car is Ka'a which is actually pigeon and not Hawaiian adapted from the English word car or the Bostonian word *cah. They have no word whatsoever for rod. *I wanted to pahk my cah on the pahk.
Can't help you with the translation either but, one thing is for sure, your Dad was one cool cat with a neat as hell hot rod.
Thanks for the compliments everyone! I will pass them on to my dad. He's 79 and doesn't do the internet thing. Duane
Thanks Ed I always thought when I read it that way it was just a miss-print. Now if someone could actually explain to me the origin of the term so I could have some real grasp of what it actually means. @Jim Bouchard and @gimpyshotrods I used to work with a guy from Baaaaston that had one of those gag plates on his car that said that.