mama - parent, ancestor; creator, originator; caretaker, sustainer
ma - earth, land; outdoors, world; country, territory; soil
nimi - name, word
lete - cold, cool; uncooked, raw
seli - fire; cooking element, chemical reaction, heat source
len - cloth, clothing, fabric, textile; cover, layer of privacy
in toki pona, proper names are treated as adjectives, 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 name.
names in toki pona are "tokiponized," which means fitting the name into toki pona phonotactics. the general guidelines to tokiponization are the following:
people use lots of different headnouns in toki pona, depending on what word(s) they identify with more. for example, i use soweli as my headnoun!
keep this in mind when speaking toki pona!
for example, since not everyone is a jan, it doesn't make sense to
translate "everyone" as "jan ale", instead you should translate it as
something like "ijo ale" or just "ale"
basically - don't use jan if you're not actually sure you're referring to a jan!
my name, tess, turns into
soweli Tesa!
technically, my name should be Te, but the
s in my name felt important to include, so it's
Tesa instead!
my cat, tiara, is soweli Sijala!
the r in her name turns into an l because i tap my r's, and the ti turns
into si.
a person named Elizabeth could be jan Elisape