Hawaiian Islands Nickname: Mokupuni o Hawaii

True color satellite image of the Hawaiian Islands

United States

The Hawaiian Islands (Hawaiian: Mokupuni o Hawaii) are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometres) from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll. Once known as the "Sandwich Islands", the name chosen by James Cook in honour of the then First Lord of the Admiralty John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, the archipelago now takes its name from the largest island in the cluster. The United States state of Hawaii occupies the archipelago almost in its entirety, with the sole exception of Midway island, which is instead an unincorporated territory within the United States Minor Outlying Islands.

The Hawaiian Islands are the exposed peaks of a great undersea mountain range known as the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain, formed by volcanic activity over a hotspot in the Earth's mantle. The islands are about 1,860 miles (3,000km) from the nearest continent.[1]

Captain James Cook visited the islands on January 18, 1778 and named them the "Sandwich Islands" in honor of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who was one of his sponsors as the First Lord of the Admiralty.[2] This name was in use until the 1840s, when the local name "Hawaii" gradually began to take precedence.[3]

The Hawaiian Islands have a total land area of 6,423.4 square miles (16,636.5km2). Except for Midway, which is an unincorporated territory of the United States, these islands and islets are administered as the state of Hawaiithe 50th state of the United States of America.

The eight main islands of Hawaii (also called the Hawaiian Windward Islands) are listed here. All except Kahoolawe are inhabited.

Smaller islands, atolls, and reefs (all west of Niihau are uninhabited) form the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, or Hawaiian Leeward Islands:

The state of Hawaii counts 137 "islands" in the Hawaiian chain.[13] This number includes all minor islands and islets offshore of the main islands (listed above) and individual islets in each atoll. These are just a few:

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Hawaiian Islands - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia