Aloha means 'The sign' in Arabic

Recently Layth and I took my parents to Hawaii. It has always been my mother's dream to go there, ever since she was a child in Iraq. She and her siblings would watch two types of films. The first were Westerns and the second were Elvis Presley films. These pretty much informed her idea of America when she was young. In her mind, the country was one vast landscape where handsome, rugged cowboys fought bad guys, rescued beautiful but helpless women, and rode strong white horses into bars where they listened to the hip-shaking music of rockabilly guys wearing leather jackets. Just what you would expect a hybrid of those two genres to yield. She tells a story about how when she first arrived to the States. She and Dad drove cross country, stopping at Knott's Berry Farm in California, and seeing some guy dressed as a Native American (yes, yes I'm using the PC term here even though this took place forty years ago.) Anyway, it was just a costume, but Mom was so moved that she went up to him with tears of empathy about how his land was taken and he was subsequently displaced, and oh how she understood his situation. My dad had to firmly but gently pull her away from the 'Native' American. So she loved Westerns, but equally she was fascinated with Hawaii. It was a paradise you read about in books and saw in movies, such as those Elvis Presley films. In fact, to go back to her vision of America - you've got the cowboys fighting bad guys and saving the frontier. But if you went 20 miles West, you'd find Elvis Presley singing to Ann Margret on a beach blanket. So, this brings me back to my point. Hawaii. Maui. 2009. Many, many years after she'd decided she wanted to visit there she was. Mom was in heaven. The sounds of the ocean, the sun, the fresh air...Heaven. My dad, also enjoyed the trip. But for him it was more of a history and etymology lesson. Dad was convinced that the Hawaiian language had its roots in Arabic. Yep. We would drive by and every sign or name he saw, he would repeat out loud and explain how that word sounded EXACTLY like its Arabic counterpart. It reminded me of that film where the woman's father thinks the Greeks invented everything. For example. ALOHA. A - lo- ha. Well Dad decided that it was the equivalent of the Arabic way of saying AL - LOWHA (with a heavy H sound) which means The Sign. ..okay.... but Aloha in Hawaiian means Hello. And The Sign in Arabic has nothing to do with that. "Well when you tell someone hello, you are giving them a sign." Oh yeah, of what? "That you want to talk to them - that you want to greet them!" he would say calmly, but clearly not understanding why I wasn't grasping this simple concept. Riiiiight.... "Take also for example Makena Beach." Ooh yes, let's go there and watch the sunset! "...Makena comes from the Arabic word for 'place' which is MA-KAHN. See what I mean? When you say let us go to the beach, you are going to a place. Hence the name Makena." At this point I began to fear that dad had too much sun. We tried to bring him inside, but it only encouraged him. He found an Atlas at the hotel sundries store, and sat on the couch in the lobby with a frothy pineapple drink with an umbrella in it. He sipped away as he flipped through the pages, muttering to himself about this word and that. "See even Maui! MAH-WEE also means the color blue, and look at all the blue ocean around us! It is so perfect!" He paused, taking in the magnitude of this discovery. Then another sip of his drink and he resumed his flip, flip, flipping. "Rand McNally! The maker of this map!" What about it? Don't tell me they are-- "--Arabic. Yes!" Really, Dad? McNally? I think that might hail from a little further west...like Ireland... "No look here, it is plain as day. McNally is a shortened version of MA-KAHN ALI. Ali's Place!" ...umm "This fellow Rand must have gone to Ali's place to draw up these maps!" Head spinning, I looked around for Layth, but he'd gone back to the room with mom. I found them there later watching an old Western on television --which must be some sort of head trip for her. I announced to Layth that perhaps for next year's vacation we should go somewhere with less fodder for Dad's etymological Arab-ization. After a moment's thought, Layth suggested Spain. Yes! I nodded in oblivious agreement, Dad could not possibly find any Arabic connections there. ...and then it dawned on me... I'll let you know how it goes next year.