Recently I have begun looking at African symbology, or “Adinkra,” and one symbol in particular caught my eye immediately:
Noticing this has got me thinking, has anyone else recognized any references to or influences from Indigenous culture in Bionicle that is not Maori?
What?
There are definitely some other cultures that Bionicle took inspiration from.
For example, there are characters with names from several different languages, like Greek, Hungarian, Serbian, and various Polynesian languages. People who worked on bionicle have also talked about getting inspiration from comics and movies, like Alien.
It’s entirely possible that someone working on Bionicle knew about these Ghanaian symbols, but I haven’t found any source directly confirming this.
My bad. That should say indigenous that is not Maori- with particular focus on African subcultures.
I do not know about everything else, but the UDD symbol at least does not draw inspiration from the symbol you posted, because it was modified from its original B4 symbol.
Nani? Hungarian? Who/what was named after hungarian words?
According to Greg, Annona was influenced by a monster from Hungarian folklore.
In addition to what voxoven said, according to someone on BZP, there’s a ta-matoran named Maglya, which means “pyre” in Hungarian.
Many Matoran names are derived from their element related words:
Zemya, Kamen, Arktinen, Podu, Golyo, Piatra, Kivi…
EDIT: I made a topic about Matoran names
There is also the heavy Latin/Roman/Greek influence in the Bara Magna setting, especially in the names
Edited title for grammar
