Toriyama went one step further. He took a Hawai'ian word (actually a name) such as Kamehameha (which is indeed pronounced as "kah-meh-ha-MEH-ha") and altered its meaning to work in a different way. A Hawai'ian would see the word and indeed treat it as "the lonely one", but a Japanese speaker would read it "Turtle Devastation Wave" because Toriyama uses furigana to provide a different meaning. Notice that a Japanese would refer to the move as "Kameh-hameh-HA", not only indicating an entirely different pronunciation but an entirely different meaning. That is because he used the furigana to give a different pronunciation for hame and ha; otherwise, he would have used a different name.
Consider, for example, "Knight". As you might suspect, being a foreign word, they'd use the Romaji transliteration, naito, which would be pronounced "naih-TOH" (exactly as you'd pronounce "knight", but since their phonetics are syllable-based and not phoneme-based, they'll pronounce the "oh" at the end. However, kanji-wise, you'd have 騎士; kishi, which loosely translates as "knight". Effectively, both versions are right, but while one deals with the foreign concept, the other is the closest interpretation. That is because 士; shi, often relates to "warrior" (because of how it is used for bushi and senshi, the Japanese terms for warrior and fighter), while the kanji 騎; ki relates to "horse"; hence, "horse warrior", which is a pretty darn good way to relate to a knight, which is traditionally known as a warrior on horseback. In the same way, Toriyama used the kanji for kame (being Master Roshi the Turtle Hermit; don't be surprised if you thus hear kame-sennin to refer to Master Roshi), and used one of the many ways to pronounce the kanji for "devastation" and "energy wave" to resemble the Hawai'ian king's name.
Thus, regardless of what you find, Kamehameha when used on Dragon Ball Z is translated as "Turtle (Hermit) Devastation Wave". In fact, while Toriyama could have easily used the kanji for "turtle", here's how he wrote the ability: かめはめ波. Basically, you have "kamehame" on Hiragana (meaning you should have looked for the Japanese translation on first place) and the kanji for "wave". However, if you see how 波 is really transliterated, you'd hear "nami" instead, because that's the way the kanji is meant to be pronounced. Hence, you see furigana and meaning alteration at work; instead of "nami" (which would have caused the wave to be called "Kamehamenami", he altered the kanji pronunciation to "ha" to resemble the Hawai'ian king's name. In fact, you may see the kanji written as 波は, to indicate the reader "it's 'wave', but pronounce it ha".
So...pretty clear on how you reach that meaning? You're correct in that "Kamehameha" means "lonely one" because that's the original Hawai'ian name meaning, but that doesn't mean it WILL have that same use.
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