Pele: canonical, contested, and the false forms on record
Evidence dossier 387 — Pele. Every exhibit catalogued, every ruling stated with its grounds.
At a Glance
- Canonical form: Pele
- 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. 387 of 548
The Evidence
Exhibit 1 — the attestation. The tradition's record preserves this name in its romanized scholarly form: Pele — 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 pele differs from the canonical Pele 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. Pele's archaeology is volcanic and ongoing. The Kīlauea caldera preserves shrine features and offering deposits on its rims; the 1790 ash layers — footprints hardened in the fallout of an eruption that caught a war party of Keōua on the caldera floor — are among the most haunting archaeological traces in Polynesia (Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park). Museum collections hold her family's images: the Bishop Museum and the British Museum keep carved wooden ki'i of Pele, Hi'iaka, and the pig-god Kamapua'a collected in the nineteenth century. Mauna Loa's 1881 flow, which stopped short of Hilo after public offerings were made to her, is the goddess's most famous 'documented' intervention. The lava itself is the archive: every flow is dated, and the chants date with it.
Exhibit 4 — the continuing record. Pele is the most visible Hawaiian deity in the modern world: her name brands everything from hot sauces to football teams, while the real goddess receives offerings at her crater in every season. The Merrie Monarch hula festival and a hundred hālau keep her family in the dance; the published epics of Hi'iaka keep the migration cycle in print.
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 Pele: canonical, cited, and defended. The keyboard form pele 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 /pele/ 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 — Beckwith, Hawaiian Mythology, Westervelt, Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes, Emerson, Pele and Hiiaka.
The Register Continues
The register holds 548 entries like this one — each temple with its own ruling. Read the temple's founding dispatch for the story, its Restoration File for the philology, its Resonance File for the industries, or the whole archive end to end.
Continue the register — previous entry: Pḗgasos (read it) · next entry: Perkūnas (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.