The story of the name

How a name becomes property

It began while he was alive. In 1962 the Honolulu promoter Kimo McVay began trademarking Duke's name, and in 1964 opened a restaurant and nightclub in Waikīkī under it, where a young Don Ho played. Duke had a financial stake in the venture, which was the first time in his life that his own name reliably paid him anything.

He died on 22 January 1968. Five years later, in 1973, his widow Nadine sold the clothing trademark to Catalina Swimwear, on the mainland.

From there it moved the way commercial assets move. The mark passed to the Outrigger Canoe Club side in 1986, the year the Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Foundation was formed. Catalina went bankrupt, and in 1993 a businessman named Charlie Carr bought the Catalina mark out of the bankruptcy for ten thousand dollars. Carr and the Outrigger foundation then litigated against each other through the mid-nineties and settled in 1997. In 1999 the rights were consolidated into Malama Pono, a company run by Donald Love, which owns them today.

There was further litigation in 2005, this time against a family-connected party trading under the Kahanamoku name on surfboards.

What his family has said

A member of Duke's own family was sued for opening a business under his own surname. His response, on the record, was that this is my family name.

I feel a great hurt. I feel as though it's an ongoing thing of people coming to Hawaiʻi and capitalizing on it.

Jo-Anne Kahanamoku-Sterling, Duke's niece, quoted in Honolulu Magazine

We are not going to soften that or answer it. It is the most important sentence on this page and it is about people in our position.

Where we sit in it

The company that publishes this site holds a licence to Duke Kahanamoku's name and likeness. The licence comes from Malama Pono, which owns the rights. It does not come from the Kahanamoku family, and it does not constitute the family's endorsement of anything, including this site.

The licence covers his name and his likeness. It does not cover a photographer's copyright in any particular photograph of him, which is why there are no pictures of Duke on this site yet. Each one has to be cleared separately, in writing, with whichever archive or estate holds it, and none of that is done.

Nor does it give us any monopoly on telling his story. Hawaiʻi's publicity statute exempts historical, educational, newsworthy and documentary use, so anyone may write a Duke Kahanamoku biography or make a film about him without asking us. That seems right to us and we would not want it otherwise.

What we owe

Duke earned almost nothing from the fame he generated. Amateur rules barred him from being paid to swim during the years he was the fastest man in the water, and the endorsement money that went to white Olympians of his era did not come to him. He worked as a city clerk and ran a service station. He could not afford his own passage to Stockholm in 1912; Honolulu business interests paid for it because they saw a promotional opportunity.

Every company that has made money from his name since, including ours, is the sequel to that. Saying so does not settle anything. But a site that described his generosity without describing what it cost him would be telling the tourist version, and there are enough of those.

What is not on this page yet

What we give away, in dollars, to whom, and on what schedule. That belongs here and it is not written because the numbers are not settled. When they are, they go on a page with the recipients named and the amounts stated, and not before. A vague commitment to giving back would be worth less than this blank space.