by Akril » February 16th, 2012, 6:00 am
Right, I forgot about Joe and Max. I agree about the writers just not bothering to make every name African in origin, but I've seen a couple of fan artists/writers make a serious attempt to explain these characters' obviously non-African names within the context of the TLK universe by giving them names that sound like their English names but are African in origin.
In fact, the Australian Disney Adventures article on SP states that Timon means "team" in Swahili...however, the word "Timu" appears in parentheses right next to his name, as if the writers were saying, "Um...well, Timon doesn't really mean anything in Swahili...but 'Timu' does, and that name kind of sounds like 'Timon', doesn't it?" (The same article says that Kiara means "small and dark" in Swahili...but it doesn't. It means "dark" in Gaelic.)
And I should have clarified -- I don't think Giganta and Kia are the same elephant. They look alike and live around the same region, but otherwise, they're complete opposites. I suppose you could probably set up a scenario where a boulder dropped on Giganta's head during that earthquake and gave him amnesia so that he forgot about being a king and wanted nothing to do with it. Then after giving himself a new name and escaping from his oldkingdom years later, he encounters Kopa and Simba, yet Simba somehow doesn't recognize him...it all seems a bit too contrived to me.
I was picturing some kind of scenario where the Giganta and Kia are long lost twins that went down different paths that both intersected with Simba's a couple of times.
EDIT: Oh, and "Kataka" has various meanings in Sanskrit, the most common one being "ring of gold around an elephant's tusk" -- it's also specified as a male name. There's also a plant native to Madagascar commonly known as the "life plant" which is also called "kataka-taka", which means "astonishing" and "remarkable"...in Tagalog (a language spoken in the Philippines). : |