Nanaue, modern artistic interpretation by Di (they-them),2023
Source creator explicitly names Nanaue. Modern2023 artistic interpretation, not a historical Hawaiian carving or an ancient canonical depiction.
Overview
Nakuina describes Nanaue as an apparently human child with a shark’s mouth between his shoulders. His father warns Kalei against feeding him animal flesh, but his grandfather hopes to make him a strong warrior and disregards the warning. Nanaue conceals his second mouth beneath a mantle and changes into a shark when he enters water. As he grows, people who pass his family’s cultivated fields on the way to the shore disappear.
Exposure during compulsory plantation work reveals his identity. He escapes capture, moves between islands and resumes predation, until Molokaʻi people and the young deity Unauna finally overcome him. The account connects his immense body with Puʻumano and other local features. Its attention to concealment, family responsibility and collective response makes Nanaue a particular narrated person; his conduct should not be assigned to every shark guardian.
The Molokaʻi ending gives the community’s tools an important role alongside Unauna’s intervention. Nanaue remains partly constrained by the ropes fastened around his human body, and people place nets across the shallow water to block escape. After he is hauled uphill, his immense body repeatedly extinguishes the fire with blood and water. Unauna then directs people to cut bamboo from the sacred Kainalu grove into knives, divide the flesh into strips and dry it before burning. The grove’s later loss of sharpness is attributed to divine anger in the narrative. These ropes, hillside grooves and bamboo provide the story’s particular place-based explanations, rather than verified zoological or botanical observations.
Origins & earliest records
Emma Metcalf Nakuina’s named contribution appeared in Thrum’s 1907 collection, which credits different Hawaiian and other contributors chapter by chapter. The date establishes this English publication, rather than Nanaue’s oral beginning. The account’s association with the reign of ʻUmi is a narrative setting, not an independently verified date of composition.
Records & interpretation
The inspected chapter supplies Nanaue’s back-mouth, transformations, island movements and final defeat. Its references to named hills and rock features document a narrated relationship with landscape. These are textual and cultural witnesses, rather than anatomical observations establishing a human-shark species or independent forensic confirmation of the events.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Hawaiian Folk Tales, XXIV: The Shark-Man, Nanaue
Selected inspected chapter; a dated collected witness, not a comprehensive bibliography.
- 02
Hawaiian Folk Tales: A Collection of Native Legends
Chicago: A.C. McClurg,1907; selected contributor credited.
Family, evolution & connections
Nanaue’s parents in The Shark-Man, Nanaue
Hawaiian Folk Tales XXIV, selected 1907 account; parentage corroborated by Kahoʻiwai.
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- Kamohoaliʻi and Kalei (joint parents)
Named marriage, expected child and birth explicitly link Kamohoaliʻi and Kalei to Nanaue. Joint-parent node represents two parents, not a separate being. No shark species, additional children or natural reproductive process inferred. Other accounts remain separate.
Kamohoaliʻi
The University of Hawaiʻi’s Kahoʻiwai account names Nanaue as the child of Kamohoaliʻi and Kalei. Thrum’s collection supplies a particular narrative in which the shark god reveals his nature before the birth. This is a source-qualified parentage relationship in Hawaiian moʻolelo; Nanaue’s changing forms are not a biological hybrid classification or a claim about real shark reproduction.
Kalei
The Shark-Man, Nanaue explicitly describes Kalei giving birth to the boy and protecting the secret of the shark-mouth on his back. Her later supervision of his bathing belongs to that story’s presentation of motherhood and concealment. This records the mother named in the selected 1907 collection, without making every Nanaue account identical or treating magical changes as inherited natural anatomy.
Kamapuaʻa
Thrum’s Nanaue story describes a child whose concealed shark-mouth requires his mother’s protection. The National Park Service’s Kamapuaʻa account describes a child recovered in hog form and cared for by his grandmother. These selected Hawaiian narratives connect unusual forms with family care in distinct circumstances. The parallel does not make the figures close relatives or assign ordinary animal species to their genealogy.
Located primary passages
Specific passages supporting details in this entry, grouped by their published witness.
Hawaiian Folk Tales: A Collection of Native Legends
Chicago: A.C. McClurg,1907; selected contributor credited.
- Nanaue has a shark mouth on his back between the shoulder blades.
- Nanaue takes shark form in the water and eats small fish.
- Nanaue’s grandfather violates the warning against animal food, feeding him dog meat and pork.
Documents this credited English collected version, not a universal account of Hawaiian tradition. European terms such as crocodile are historical translator choices, not evidence of native fauna. Collector racial or cultural generalizations are not adopted.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary textHawaiian Folk Tales, XXIV: The Shark-Man, NanaueResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
Thematic illustrationNanaue, modern artistic interpretation by Di (they-them),2023
Source creator explicitly names Nanaue. Modern2023 artistic interpretation, not a historical Hawaiian carving or an ancient canonical depiction.