My recent post about the house at 91 Coelho Way got me wondering about the history of the name.

It turns out to be named for one of the most well-known Hawaiians of his day, William Joseph Coelho, who was born on Maui in 1870, and died of injuries received in an automobile accident in November 1924.

According to news accounts, Coelho was a passenger in a car driving through Kipapa Gulch on the way back to Honolulu from Schofield the evening of November 11, when it skidded out of control and overturned. Coelho was trapped under the car and suffered serious injuries. He was first driven to Tripler Hospital, then moved to Queen’s Hospital, where he was operated on overnight. He died at 10 am the following morning.

Coelho served two terms in the Territorial House and one term in the Senate, was a well known musician, a lecturer on things Hawaiian, and introduced the bill in 1907 that created the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts of the Territory of Hawai‘i, predecessor of the University of Hawaii.

This from the website, Discogs.com:

William Joseph Coelho
Hawaiian musician and composer, later Territorial Senator (born January 1, 1870 at Waikapu, Maui, HI – died November 12, 1924 in Honolulu, Oahu, HI)

A graduate of St. Louis College, Coelho was part of a large group of Hawaiian musicians managed by Mayor John H. Wilson that performed for sixteen weeks at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, in 1901. Later, he became Recording Secretary of one of the four royal Hawaiian societies, the Hale O Na Alii O Hawaii (est. 1918), and served in the territorial legislature of Hawaii, twice as representative, once as senator from Maui. He died as the result of a car accident.

Composed “Lei Poni Moi” (Wreath Of Carnations), “Kilakila O Haleakala” (Majestic Mt. Haleakala), and “Roselani.”

And this description was included in a Honolulu Star-Bulletin story on the accident that took his life.

Digging through old newspaper clippings, I found Coelho acquired a lot in the area in Nuuanu then known as Niolopa, and acquired a second parcel in 1911.

In 1923, a name change notice was publlished in the Honolulu Advertiser:

A column by Donald Billam-Walker with the story behind the name change appeared in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on August 12, 1941.

In 1911, according to Walker, it was first proposed the small roadway be named for William Coelho, whose home was located along the road.

Coelho, however, declined, and instead suggested it be named “Ku Lane” in honor of his newborn son, who was known within the family as Ku, rather than by his long Hawaiian name, Kukailimokunuiakeaenaikalani. “Accordingly, the roadway was renamed Ku lane in 1911,” Billam-Walker reported.

However, “an odd set of circumstances arose.” The family home of George Waterhouse, a vice-president and assistant manager of the Bank of Bishop, the predecessor of First Hawaiian Bank, was also located on Ku lane. His daughter’s name was Julia, which was Hawaiianized as Kulia, according to Billam-Walker, leading some of her friends to call it Kulia Lane.

“In order to guard against possible loss of the name of this street to the Coelho family through the term ‘Kulia’ creeping into use, it was decided in 1917 to rename Ku lane as Coelho lane (since changed to ‘way’) in honor of Ku’s father, W.J. Coelho.”

Looking through old newspapers, Coelho Lane and Coelho Way seemed to have been used interchangeably through much of the 20th. However, since 2002, all the published references have used Coelho Way.

Just as an aside, my mother was outraged by the continuing snub of Coelho by the University of Hawaii. She felt the failure after more than a century to name a building after the Hawaiian legislator whose bill created the university was another sad example of casual (or not so casual) anti-Hawaiian prejudice. It’s hard not to agree.