It is a U.S. island state in the Pacific Ocean. The name given to the islands by the Englishman James Cook was Sandwich, as a tribute to his patron John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich; but in the nineteenth century they regained their local name Hawai'i, which is supposed to be derived from the protopolinesio hawaiki ("land of the gods [by volcanoes]") or perhaps from the name of their mythical discoverer Hawai'iloa.