 Other accounts attribute the name to the legendary realm of Hawaiki, a place from which some Polynesian people are said to have originated, the place where they transition to in the afterlife, or the realm of the gods and goddesses.Captain James Cook, the English explorer and navigator who was captain of the first European expedition that discovered the Hawaiian Islands, called them the "Sandwich Islands" after his patron, the Earl of Sandwich.Cook was killed on the Big Island at Kealakekua Bay on 14 February 1779, in a mêlée which followed the theft of a ship's boat.