What's in a name?

We're thinking about names for baby at the moment, both girl and boy names, as there's still a certain amount of ambiguity about the sex - if the kid doesn't want to show us, what can we do, I say just wait for the surprise! Anyway we need something suitably Rurutu, and then I get to choose something Welsh, I don't know whether we're doing our kids any favors by not giving them a French name, like most other kids here, but I hope they'll understand when they are older. I think Matotea is a very appropriate name, it really suits her and it's also a very 'weighty name' with a few great stories behind it. Matotea literally translated means white - 'tea', cliff - 'mato' which sounds pretty weird in English (might just as well call her Dover), but it's the name of a rock-face in between our village and the neighboring village of Avera. It's a beautiful basalt core that was left here as a legacy of the second phase of volcanism which profoundly shaped Rurutu's topology, uplifting the island, which may already have been an atoll (i.e. flat as a pancake) by around 300m or more. The cliff is the perfect nesting spot for red-tailed tropic birds, and is covered in lichen, which gives it its definite white glow.

The rock is part of several island legends, one re-counts the history of a giant warrior from Tubuai, who swam over to Rurutu to attack the villagers of Avera, the villagers, unable to defeat the mighty warrior, devised a plan to lure him into the mountains, where they had dug a large hole, the giant fell into the hole and was turned to stone, forming Matotea. However, the tale that I like best is the tale of a fisherman who became lost at sea in a terrible storm one night, he was no longer able to find his way home and despaired of ever seeing his family again, but suddenly the light of the full moon broke through the storm clouds, lighting up the face of Matotea, allowing the fisherman to get his bearings, guiding him back to the natural pass in Avera and safely back to his family at home.