Why didn't the Toa Mata's names change?

Why didn’t the Toa Mata’s names change during Naming Day? BioSector01 says that the renaming of Matoran on Naming Day is meant to honor their great deeds. No disrespect to Jaller or Hewkii or anyone, but the Toa did much more heroic things than they did. Does the Naming Day tradition just not apply to Toa or something?

Of course, the real-life reason for Naming Day is the controversy around the usage of Maori terms. But that’s the other part of my question: the Toa’s names were repurposed Maori words, too, right? So why didn’t the Maori push to have Lego change the Toa’s names? I mean, the usage of the word “Toa” was seen as disrespectful just like the word “Tohunga” being trivialized as a random villager. So what set the Toa apart from the Tohunga in the Maori’s view?

I think it is because toa meant hero, which the toa were. But tohung meant priest, which the matoran DEFINATELY were not.

5 Likes

Also, I think it would be confusing for kids to change the names of the main characters; the matoran were mostly side characters.

4 Likes

I mean, the Toa are already the literal subjects of prophecy and held as heroes by default. I kinda makes a naming-day redundant for them.

4 Likes

I guess so. But another thing to note is that in the case of the Matoran, the pronunciation of their names didn’t change. “Jaller” was still pronounced “Jal-uh.”

Also, looking up each of the Toa’s names, none of them are as significant to the Maori as the word Tohunga is. In fact, Lewa, Gali, and Onua aren’t even Maori words.

Pohatu literally means “stone” as many people know, “Tahu” means many things, but most notably it’s the verb for “to light on fire” or “to ignite,” and “Kopaka” can mean “ice” “frost” or “glacier.” These are all pretty common, universal, mundane things that wouldn’t be offensive to use.

3 Likes

It isn’t just Maori words: jala was changed, despite having no meaning in Maori I can discern.

2 Likes

Yea, not really sure. But in regards to the names of the Toa, it’s the best reason I can assume.

I can also imagine LEGO would bargain pretty hard not to change the names of their primary characters, like you said.

It’s just a confusing situation overall. Like, “Huki” in Maori refers to roasting something on a spit or a spit roast itself. It also means taking revenge. Pretty mundane in my opinion, but it was still changed to Hewkii. But, I’m not familiar enough with Maori culture to know what’s important to them and what isn’t.

1 Like

Well, clearly “Tohunga” was important to them.

I imagine that some of the matoran’s names were simply changed to fit the in-universe naming day explanation; ie, Jala did great heroics in the story, so his name was changed for that reason, not a real world one.

1 Like

Well, Naming Day as a concept only existed to explain the name changes caused by the Maori disputes. It was never a part of the story prior to that.

1 Like

Most likely the story was already written when the disputes arose. They changed the names that presented an issue, then came up with Naming Day as a reason for the change, then changed the names of the other matoran that also did heroic things so that it made more sense.

1 Like