The canonical register: Makemake

Evidence dossier 292 — Makemake. Every exhibit catalogued, every ruling stated with its grounds.

At a Glance

• Canonical form: Makemake
• Original script: —
• Pantheon: Polynesian
• Convention: vowel-length marking as the language commissions standardize it
• False forms on record: 0
• Contested forms: none attested
• Series: The Canonical Register, No. 292 of 548

The Evidence

Exhibit 1 — the attestation. The tradition's record preserves this name in its romanized scholarly form: Makemake — no older script survives to transcribe, so the canonical content is the exactness of the spelling itself.

Exhibit 2 — the flattened form. The plain form makemake differs from the canonical Makemake only by convention of display — case, not content. It is acceptable everywhere: in legacy systems, in plain-text citation, in the DNS itself. What is not acceptable is what follows in the register: respellings that change the letters, not just their case.

Exhibit 3 — the physical record. The material evidence is concentrated at Orongo, the ceremonial village on the Rano Kau crater rim: some fifty stone houses and over a thousand petroglyphs, including the wide-eyed Makemake faces and birdman figures documented by Routledge (1914–15) and catalogued by Georgia Lee (1992). Several carved slabs were removed to museums in the 1970s after weathering and vandalism; the village was consolidated under William Mulloy's restoration program. The islets of Motu Nui, Motu Iti and Motu Kao Kao below the cliffs preserve the contest's arena; Rano Raraku's quarry and the ahu platforms (notably Ahu Tongariki) form the wider sacred landscape. The Rapa Nui National Park has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995.

Exhibit 4 — the continuing record. The birdman's egg became the island's flag: the Tapati Rapa Nui festival, held each February, stages canoe races and dance competitions in which the old birdman legend is the centerpiece, and the winner's crown echoes the tangata manu's year of rule. Orongo, restored as a ceremonial village, anchors the UNESCO-listed Rapa Nui National Park.

The Convention's Own History

Every tradition in this register has its own scholarly transliteration standard, built by its own specialists over decades or centuries, and the register follows each on its own terms: vowel-length marking as the language commissions standardize it. The principle that unifies them is the one the whole project stands on: a name is evidence, and evidence is not negotiable — not for keyboards, not for convenience, not for anyone.

The Protocol's Position

Can the canonical form live in the address bar? Almost always, yes. IDNA 2008 admits every mark this register defends — the DNS stores them as `xn--` punycode and modern browsers render them natively. The real frictions are practical, not legal: some registrars stock only part of the IDN space, so a theoretically valid name can be temporarily unbuyable; and stacked combinations (an acute riding a macron) remain awkward to type on mobile keyboards even where the protocol accepts them.

The project's answer is a ranked ladder, not a compromise: the full restoration first, then attested fallbacks in descending order of completeness. The ladder's lowest rung, plain ASCII, is a vehicle for legacy systems — sanctioned, but never presented as the scholarly form.

The Verdict

Case closed on Makemake: canonical, cited, and defended. The keyboard form makemake is the same name in another register of display — always acceptable. The register's files remain open: if a source surfaces that changes any line of this entry, the entry changes. Until then, the temple at /makemake/ holds the canonical form.

The docket for this ruling: no false forms on the docket; no contested forms attested; the attestation rests on 6 cited sources — Métraux, Ethnology of Easter Island (1940), Routledge, The Mystery of Easter Island (1919), Englert, La tierra de Hotu Matu'a (1948).

The Register Continues

This is one of 548 entries in the Canonical Register — the authoritative reference for every flagship temple. The temple's founding dispatch tells the name's story; its Restoration File details the marks; its Resonance File reads the archetype into the industries. The blog index holds the whole archive, and the Rulebook states the convention this register enforces.

Continue the register — previous entry: Maitreya (read it) · next entry: Mamaqucha (read it).

The Canonical Register is written from the same canonical record as the lexicon itself. If a false form is missing from this page, it is because the evidence does not support calling it false — or because we have not seen it yet. Show us, with a citation, and the register will answer.