lesson 9 - names

vocab

󱤱 mamaparent, ancestor; creator, originator; caretaker, sustainer, guardian

󱤰 maearth, land, soil; country, territory, world; outdoors

󱥂 nimiword, name

󱤦 letecold, cool, frozen; freeze; uncooked, raw

󱥗 selihot, warm; heat, fire, flame; burn

󱤥 lencloth, fabric, textile; hidden, secret, covered, private

in toki pona, proper names are treated as modifiers, with a capitalized first letter. this means that you have to pick a word which describes what the thing is, and then modify that word with the tokiponized name.

jan Lisa

a jan named lisa

ma Mewika

a ma (country) named Mewika (the united states)

in sitelen pona, you write names by putting sitelen pona characters inside a cartouche, and read the name by the first sound of each word in the cartouche.

󱤑󱦐󱤦󱤎󱥗󱤄󱦑

jan Lisa

the words in the cartouche are 󱤦 lete, 󱤎 ilo, 󱥗 seli, and 󱤄 ale, which spells Lisa.

some put special meaning in the words they choose to spell their names with, others choose the first ones that come to mind. either way is fine!

tokiponization

names in toki pona are "tokiponized," which means fitting the name into toki pona phonotactics. the general guidelines to tokiponization are the following:

use the local name and pronunciation
syllables consist of a consonant, then a vowel, then an optional letter n.
the consonant of the first syllable may be omitted.
wu, wo, ji, and ti are illegal
- wu becomes u, wo becomes o, ji becomes i, and ti becomes si
you can't follow up a syllable-final n with an m or another n
d->t, b->p, v->w, f->p, r->w/l/k
- english r turns to w
- tapped or trilled r becomes l
- french/german r turns to k
preserving syllable count is more important than preserving consonants
if you're tokiponizing your own name - don't be scared to break a rule or two if the resulting name makes you happier! it's your name and you can do whatever you want with it

headnouns

"headnouns" are the word you put in front of the name, the thing the name is describing. when naming yourself in toki pona, you can pick anything as a headnoun for whatever reason you want! you can choose to describe yourself as a 󱤑 jan, 󱤎 ilo, 󱥑 pipi, or anything else! break loose and have fun with how you choose to express yourself! and importantly, respect how others choose to describe themselves!

examples

tess (my name!)

󱥢󱦐󱥧󱤉󱥦󱤈󱦑
soweli Tesa
technically, my name should be Te to preserve syllable count, but i wanted to preserve the s in my name, so i broke a rule and made it Tesa instead!

tiara (my cat!)

󱥢󱦐󱥦󱤌󱤑󱤄󱤧󱤂󱦑
soweli Sijala
ti is an illegal syllable, so it turns into si, and the r becomes an l because i'm norwegian and tap my rs!

english, the language

󱥬󱦐󱤌󱥁󱤧󱤍󱦑
toki Inli
here, the ng cluster is simplified to n, and the final sh was dropped to prioritize syllable count

swedish

󱥬󱦐󱥷󱤉󱥂󱥗󱤂󱦑
toki Wensa
derived from swedish svenska, the sv cluster is simplified to just w, and the sk cluster gets simplified to s!
remember that there's not ever just one correct tokiponization, for example, swedish could be toki Sensa instead!