East Coast Kahuna

What is a kahuna?

According to Wikipedia, the Kahuna was the Hawaiian title for a priest, expert, teacher, and/or adviser. If you do a Google search of "kahuna" the first result comes up about the movie The Big Kahuna in the IMDB (Independent Movie DataBase). This annoys me - in my opinion the main prerequisite for the "rights" to use the title "kahuna" is that you must be from Hawaii. The second prerequisite is that it has to do with wisdom since the "kahuna" was the shaman in old Hawaii. This movie is about salesmen at a convention in Wichita, KS. Go figure...

The Wikipedia link above also describes how the term "The Big Kahuna" got incorporated into the surfing lingo - through another movie Gidget where The Big Kahuna was the best surfer on the beach. Unfortunately, this abuse of the term has caught on - surfing is associated with Hawaii - although the Gidget movies supposedly take place on Malibu beach in California. I will admit upfront that I've never seen any of the series of these movies - nor do I have an interest to ever see them.

The second result of the Google search is much more relevant. It leads to a site called Kahuna Source and this does indeed cover the origins from Hawaii.

Some purists may consider my blog title East Coast Kahuna to also be misuse of the term Kahuna. Well, I am from Hawaii - native-born (a kama`aiana rather than a malahini) - so that counts for most of it. I have a PhD - some folks may call that being wise. I do live in New York, although not really on the Atlantic Coast. But from the Hawaiian perspective, east coast is the northeast - probably covering New England and the Mid-Atlantic States (Washington DC and north). Virginia and below are the "South" and wouldn't really be called the East Coast. I have lived on the East Coast longer than in Hawaii now so I think the title justifiably applies to my viewpoint.

posted by tjh14850 @ 7:13 AM