Janice “Lokelani” Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele, a Hawaii woman whose last name is 36 characters long, wants it on her driver’s license after it was truncated several times.
The last name, however, doesn’t fit on the state-issued card. According to KHON-TV in Honolulu, she was forced to carry both her driver’s license and her state ID for the past 20 or so years because the license could fit only her last name, missing its final letter.
“The governor’s office went back into the computer department and they found a way to put our name on our state ID,” Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele told the station.
But her ID expired several months ago, and it can’t fit her last name. Officials told her to use her maiden name or shorten her last name. She said the name is the only thing she has left from her late husband. “And I went, ‘How disrespectful of the Hawaiian people,’” Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele said.
“The county has never accommodated my name on my driver’s license,” Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele told KHON.
Gawker.com reported that she sent an e-mail to a tool supplier years ago, saying that her last name was her late husband’s full name.
“You see, to some people in the world, your name is everything. If I say my name to an elder Hawaiian (kupuna), they know everything about my husband’s family going back many generations... just from the name. When the name is sliced up, changed or altered it distorts the intention and meaning that the name represents. Unfortunately, many people have been shamed into hiding their real names because they don’t fit in with the dominant culture’s lack of respect for the name,” she wrote.
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