About a decade ago, at an immigration office in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, a functionary perused my birth certificate during a visa appointment. When she got to my Hawaiian middle name, a look of disbelief spread across her face. Without saying anything, she picked up her phone. Soon, two colleagues appeared. Then, with all three of them examining my document, they had me recite my name in full — all 76 characters of it with its three ʻokina and three kahakō.

Admittedly, my middle name is longer and more complex than the average inoa. Immigration processes are strict and require rigor. Yet this spectacle, whether aimed at verification or entertainment, felt discomfiting. And it echoed the often taxing experiences of those who bear a Hawaiian name outside Hawaiʻi — particularly one with diacritics.

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Ask anyone with a Hawaiian name who spent time during childhood on the continent, and they’ll tell you about teasing. Even in Hawaiʻi, kids can be surprisingly uncharitable. Keolu Fox, a genome scientist and professor at the University of California San Diego, told me about the tussles he got into growing up. “People called me Coca-Cola, Crayola, koala.”

As adults, the jeering evolves into the relentless friction of pronunciation and the occasional affront. I’ve learned to expect looks of confusion and inquisitiveness when I introduce myself at cocktail parties outside of Hawaiʻi. And while most people make a solid attempt at saying Makana correctly, not everyone acts in good faith. One woman I met in Paris a few years ago sang “Hakuna Matata” when I introduced myself to her.

There’s also the administrative muck of it. Longer names don’t always fit on forms, and diacritics are supported at best piecemeal across the country. Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart, a professor of Native and Indigenous Studies at Yale and the author of “Cooling the Tropics,” told me she writes her name out differently depending on the context.

“If it’s anything bureaucratic, I don’t write it with the ʻokina,” she says. “I know that at some point in the bureaucratic system, it’s not going to translate.”

And yet for all the vexations, most people with Hawaiian names living elsewhere remain steadfast in using them. They see it as a responsibility, a way to place Hawaiʻi and Hawaiian culture firmly in the wider world.

To use a certain name is, in fact, a political choice as much as a personal one. Names are charged with weight and meaning. They signal allegiances, ties to communities, and the expression of priorities. They have long been a means of resistance and opposition, such as when Muhammad Ali dropped Cassius Clay, what he described as his “slave name,” or when the civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael adopted Kwame Ture.

Empires and colonizing powers have long manipulated names to oppress. This is true in the United States, where disgraceful practices like forced name assimilation in boarding schools for Native American children were commonplace. In Europe, laws that barred families from giving names beyond the Christian tradition were, in many cases including France where I live, on the books until as recently as 30 years ago.

As with other Indigenous communities, names hold immense mana in Hawaiian culture, and the history of naming is incredibly rich. Mary Kawena Pukui speaks of this in her indispensable books on Hawaiian cultural practice, “Nānā i ke Kumu.”

In pre-missionary times, she tells us, names were prized. It was often a person’s most intimate belonging in a society where possessions were few. Once spoken, a name took on a force of its own, “an existence, invisible, intangible, but real.” It could marshal mystic elements to help or hurt its bearer.

A name could come in a dream, a vision, or from a mystic voice. It could be handed down from an elder or aliʻi and could commemorate events or people. Once, while playing billiards in Kaʻū, King Kalākaua gave a baby born there at the same time the name Ke-liʻi-pahupahu-o-Kalākaua or “Kalākaua is a billiard-playing chief.” If a name was wrong — say, it was seen to be making a child sick — it could be ʻoki’d, meaning severed or removed.

Some of these practices waned as the missionaries gained influence and after an 1860 law, signed by Kamehameha IV, required all legitimate children to be given a “Christian name suitable to their sex.” Yet in many ways, the richness of these traditions persisted. And they make for a welcome contrast to the banality of baby websites like Nameberry and — let’s be frank — the social media and celebrity trends that some couples reference as they approach parenthood.

Having an Indigenous or non-standard name in America can be testing. Yet for many, it’s a source of immense pride. For those with deep ties to Hawaiʻi, why not follow the heritage of this place? Why not perpetuate and honor the culture of our exceptional string of islands?

This is what Fox and Hobart did when they became parents. And while people on the continent and beyond might struggle with the pronunciation of their children’s names — as some do with their own inoa—they have not wavered in their decision. It’s a matter of principle, a resolute choice. This is also what my wife and I did when our son was born. While the French flounder when trying to make sense of his name, we’ve never felt any regret.