It’s rather well known, that the names of early matoran were based on polynesian languages and words from those languages, attributed to those characters. Of course it’s also known, that this changed after the Maori lawsuit and that names were created differently since then.
There’s of course names based on other languages in the Mata Nui Online Game II, but those are mostly non-canon, because they weren’t created / approved by the story team.
As a person with a slavic background, I certainly recognised parts of names or even complete names of characters. One interesting case in particular was “Velika” from the Voya Nui storyline.
It felt striking to me that the name “Velika” meant “big” or “great” in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (with feminine gender tho) and similar variations of it have the same meaning in other slavic languages.
I mostly shrugged it off as something I randomly interpreted, until more about the character was revealed.
“Velika is a Great Being in disguise”. This instantly clicked with me, since “Great” was already kinda given (or rather hidden) in plain sight.
So my question (Sorry for the long essay before it) is:
“Was the foreshadowing of Velika’s true identity through his name on purpose?”
Also, since his name was derived from a feminine form, was there anything planned for him to be a female Great Being?
Sorry for this long drawn out post, but I found this really interesting plus the thing with his name isn’t pointed out on many places.
With kind regards,
Automatik
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I wouldn’t know about the foreshadowing, but as for the feminine form, it probably just sounded better as a name to the writers
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Velika being a Great Being in disguise likely wasn’t planned in 2006. There was a contest on BZP to determine the identity of the Great Being back when it was revealed someone was a great being (so in the serials of late 2010/2011). One of the things Greg said was that it wasn’t was a main female character, because he didn’t want to retcon a female character into a male character. The contest ultimately was abandoned, and Greg revealed it to be Velika some time later. So no, his name was not intended to foreshadow him being a great being, or the great being being female.
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That sounds plausible. I wonder if Velika was chosen because of his name or by chance, sonce that matches up. Also, I wonder how they created his name in the first place, aka if it was just a coincidence that they chose a name that actually meant something in another language.
It is very interesting that there are many names that sounds very close to Slavic words. Lesovikk’s name is similar to Russian “Лесник” (lesnik), which means forester, Gadunka means “Гад” (something like reptile), Lariska is Russian name Larisa.
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This is a really interesting observation and it’s good to see that people are still discovering possible foreshadowing that may explain things that originally seemed like they came out of nowhere, and I’d love to see a lot more of this in other lego series.
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No, it wasn’t. Greg only decided in 2011 or in 2012 that Velika will be a Great Being after a poll on BZPower, before that, Velika was just a normal Po-Matoran, whose alternate counterpart has become a Toa in the Kingdom Alternate Universe. It wasn’t intentional, it is just another coincident.
And I personally asked him in the Lego Message Boards with the same username if Velika’s real great being form is female to hide both her gender and identity behind the Po-Matoran form, and he said no, because he already changed his name to Velika, and had the body of a matoran, noone would have thought he was a real Great Being.
And he was right, as Karzahni did rebuild Velika’s matoran form without realizing he was a Great Being.