Discovered in Hawaii:
The name comes from Hawaiian ʻoumuamua, meaning "scout",[16] (from ʻou, meaning "reach out for", and mua, reduplicated for emphasis​, meaning "first, in advance of"[3]) and reflects the way this object is like a scout or messenger sent from the distant past to reach out to us.[3][17] The first character is a Hawaiian ʻokina, not an apostrophe, and is represented by a single quotation mark and pronounced as a glottal stop; the name was chosen by the Pan-STARRS team[18] in consultation with Kaʻiu Kimura and Larry Kimura of the University of Hawaii at Hilo.[19]