Hopefully this hasn’t been asked before, but since you are the authority on Bionicle canon, what is the canonical pronunciation of Lewa?
Is it LEEWAH
Is it LOOWAH
Or is it LAYWAH?
I’m sure that somehow there’s some lore that expressly says how it’s pronounced and I just haven’t looked deep enough or something idk
In the BIONICLE: Encyclopedia/ BIONICLE: Encyclopedia Updated (written by Greg Farshtey himself) it’s pronounced as LAY-wah
Wow, really? I always thought it was LEEWAH
Lewa’s name is controversially mispronounced in most of the media. But on the BZPower Greg used to say that the Encyclopedia’s pronunciations take the precedence. So it’s LAY-wah.
The very same thing goes for the Ignika’s (ig-NEE-kah, not ig-NIGH-kah) Inika’s (i-NEE-kah, not i-NIGH-kah), piraka (PIE-rock-ah not PURR-rock-ah) and Vezon’s (vey-ZONN, not VEE-zonn / vee-ZONN) pronunciations as well.
I’m pretty freaking excited at the hope of being able to get this one cleared up, with respect to the years of mispronunciations that we’ve seen. Thank you for asking this one, man; as a communityy, we should have cleared this up a long, long time ago, assuming that we haven’t already.
It’s kinda funny that in English I always pronounce it LEEWAH, while in German I say LEHWAH.
But as people have already pointed out it says LAYWAH in the encyclopedia.
I’ve always pronounced it Loo-wah
It might be worth noting that Lewa calls himself LEE-WAH in MoL.
What if different characters refer to him differently?
Being Swedish as I am, I pronounce it Lee-wah. Seriously, it’s an E, not an A. Actually, I pronounce Kewa Kuh-wah…
Hopefully I can help clear things up, and maybe make Greg’s job a little easier.
In 2001, official LEGO material referred to the character as Loowah by pronunciation. This was swiftly changed, and not too long after, to Laywah by pronunciation.
There were fans calling him both Laywah and Leewah by pronunciation, but LEGO’s view on it seeming shifted back and forth over the years. Then, in 2015, the G2 version of Lewa’s name was solidified as Leewah by pronunciation.
So in other words, Loowah is outdated heavily, and Leewah and Laywah are both correct. Not sure why they chose his last name to be By Pronunciation, though…
Lol now I can feel better about calling him LEEwah
All of the actual pronunciations just don’t sound right. English has specific pronounciation rules that need to be followed when making names. I’m so glad that the commercials and other sound based media opted for better, smoother pronunciations that we all still use today.
But Lewa isn’t english, I’m 99% sure it’s Maori.
Can’t be, there’s no L in the Maori alphabet. It’s Hawaiian.
In fact, only half of the original six Toa had their names derived from Maori: Tahu, Pohatu and Kopaka. (Onua appears to be Tongan, but I couldn’t find anything for Gali.)
So, how would it be pronounced in Hawaiian? Anyone who knows?
Kōpaka means two things as a noun:
(noun) Ice, Frost, Hail, Glacier (i.e. snowy stuffs)
(noun) Shortage, Deficiency, Lack. Curious how he lacked what it took to be the Leader of the Toa, mostly not wurking alnoe.
Tōpito kōpaka means polar ice cap and awa kōpaka means glacier (verb-specific, i.e. A glacier is a body of ice slowly moving down from the mountains. Maori is confusing.)
Greg has stated he pronounces it as Leewah, and wrote it as laywah in the encyclopedia because that’s how the original story team said it. Personally, I don’t see how one could read “Laywah” from “Lewa”, but my opinion is irrelevant.
I use Laywah myself… don’t know why. I first read it as Luwah, but after seeing the movie, it kinda mixed Luwah and Leewah together into Laywah.
Which just hurts, it feels wrong to pronounce it that way, especially given the ‘igniters’ prototypes.(at least I assume they were prototypes…)
ig-nee-ters 
That makes a bit more sense, they’re a gang, pirates, piraka, I can see the similarities.
I went with vez-on, close enough to the proper pronunciation.
I always went with Lee-wah, which is the ‘most canon’ pronunciation, considering even Lego went with it unanimously for g2.
