ukulele [L19th] The ukulele is a development of a Portuguese instrument called the machete that appeared in Hawaii in the late 1870s. Around that time a British army officer, Edward Purvis, acted as vice-chamberlain of the court of King Kalakaua. According to the story, local Hawaiians gave Purvis, a small, energetic, and agile man, the nickname ukulele ‘jumping flea’. When he took up the instrument he played with typical liveliness and with such success that they started to use his nickname as the name of the instrument.