I dunno man. Maybe canon will prove me wrong, but I don't think the name Kiriona was forced on Gideon. Gideon, who has wanted her whole life to feel like she's wanted by someone and belongs somewhere. If her newly-found father took her aside and said "In the language of my grandparents, our ancestors, your name is pronounced Kiriona. I would like to call you that, to save on confusion." I just... I think she'd be cool with saying yes.

She doesn't really identify with it, and she has highly ambivalent feelings about the father in question, but the name Kiriona connects her with grandparents. It might have been what her great-grandmother would have called her, if things had ever been simple and kind enough that they could have met. Kiriona offers her a place to belong in connection with the generations before her. As much as it's not enough, not on its own and as isolated from those generations and that culture as she is, its also not nothing. And I can't believe it's less than nothing.

how do we know in the books that john is indigenous? can you say more about how his indigeneity is important to his story?

hello! so there is a word of god post on race (doesn't mention John but mentions that Gideon is "mixed Maori"), BUT I frankly don't think word of god statements are worth any weight without actual in-text support (see: the "dumbledore is gay" situation). SO!

Specific evidence that John Gaius is Maori, as revealed in Nona the Ninth:

When he is listing his education, John mentions having gone to Dilworth School (John 20:8). Dilworth is an all boys boarding school in Auckland and accepts students based on financial need instead of academic or sporting achievements. Demographics appear to be about 70% low income Maori boys, indicating that it is highly likely that John is Maori

John reports that P- said he looked like a "Maori-TV pink panther" (John 15:23) when his eyes turned gold. Maori TV is a TV station that is focused primarily on Maori culture & language revitalization, with presumably all or mostly Maori hosts, and tbh I don't see why P- would say this unless John was himself Maori

John uses a te reo Māori phrase ("kia kaha, kia māia") (John 5:20) when he is saying goodbye to the corpses in the cryo lab before the power is shut off. Though it is possible he said this as a non-Maori kiwi, but in combination with the previous two points of evidence I think this all very strongly points to him being Maori

He also renames his daughter Kiriona Gaia, "Kiriona" being just literally the name "Gideon" in te reo Māori

TLT is not a series that hands you anything on a silver platter but to ME this is all pretty solid proof

Why is this relevant to The Locked Tomb?

In Nona the Ninth, we learn that before he completed apotheosis and ate the solar system, John was basically trying to save the earth from capitalism-caused climate change. Climate justice and the rights of indigenous people over their own land are deeply tied together, in the same way that climate catastrophe and capitalism/ imperialism/ colonialism are linked. disclaimer that this is NOT my area of study and others have definitely said it better; this is just the basic gist as I understand it, but on quick search I found some sources here and here if you want to do some reading.

TLT is not a series that hands you anything on a silver platter, but i don't think it is a stretch to see John as an indigenous man trying to save the earth and getting ignored and shut down at every turn by primarily western colonial powers (PanEuro, the USA) who declare him a terrorist and then as a reader thematically connecting that to the experience of indigenous climate activists IRL

there are absolutely TLT meta posts that have discussed this before me; tumblr search is nonfunctional and I have been looking for an hour and a half and cannot find anything specific even though i KNOW i reblogged multiple posts about this in the first few weeks following NTN's release. sad & I am sorry

I think that by the time the books take place, John is 10k years removed from the cultural context he grew up in, with the Nine Houses having become a genocidal colonial power in their own right (with more parallels to be made between John's forever war for the resources of literal life energy and like, oil wars), but I also think that John Gaius is a fictional character who can represent and symbolize multiple different things in service of telling a story. (not to mention the potential thematic parallels being made to how oppressed people sometimes are pressed into replicating the power dynamics of their oppressors and continuing the cycle--now that is a tumblr post i KNOW i read last year and definitely cannot find right now, once again sad & I am sorry)

How Radical Was John Gaius, Really is a forum thread that was locked by the moderators after 234534645674564 pages of heated debate

to the people who want to have a conversation about john's being an indigenous man, a māori man, i would like to remind you that the first time we see māori spoke onscreen it goes as follows.

one person in this room is interested in the cultures and languages of the world that came before, to the point her name and mission in life are respectively a human chain reaching back ten thousand years and justice for the destroyed earth: a mission that allowed her to persist beyond death, which brings her to being in control of cytherea the first's corpse. the other is john, who is disinterested in her idea of justice for them and speaks over her multiple times.

that human chain, her name? he doesn't respect it just as he doesn't respect her. this conversation is beneath him and so is her full name. he is annoyed into reciting it.

māori is spoken by john here, and it is spoken with contempt for the woman who wishes to avenge earth and whose name preserved a part of the language that he helped annihilate, along with aotearoa and all other māori people.

the first time māori is spoken in the series it is spoken by an indigenous man—who received an extensive colonial scholarship, who was alienated from his culture and sought respect and recognition in predominantly white academia, who was burned time and time again by the systems of oppression that formed the basis for climate change and the earth's abandonment by the trillionaires—who speaks it with a tone of condescension and a complete lack of gravitas because it is irrelevant to him. genuinely sad, bordering on very funny.

the second instance of māori is when he renames gideon the transliteration of her name into māori. she does not identify with it and she likely does not know its significance.

she is also a corpse: killed indirectly by cytherea the first, who presented a threat to harrow's life that could only be dealt with via her ascension to lyctorhood via gideon's death, who groomed gideon into accepting her role as cavalier primary to harrowhark nonagesimus.

killed by one of the emperor undying's fists and gestures, killed by the ideals of cavaliership which he societally instituted, killed due to cytherea the first's disillusionment with him leading her to go on a killing spree at canaan house in order to gain his attention, killed due to john and john's actions and the systems of the society he created.

the only time we see john use the māori language in a way that isn't dripping for contempt is when he renames his daughter's corpse, wherein he clarifies that she is prince kiriona gaia, heir to the emperor divine and the emperor's only daughter, the emperor's construct.

construct, like the skeletons that farm leeks on the ninth. she is not entitled to resurrection: she is to ownership, to being the ninth's chattel in life and her father's construct in death. he uses the language to declare her his.

gideon is the name of his saint, his oldest friend, spoken by the ghost of the woman that birthed her, to the nuns of her house—kiriona is john declaring a corpse his heir, and his daughter his construct.

there is a conversation i would love to have about john's indigeneity: it's the one where we acknowledge that after wakes death he has preserved the legacy of the māori language by using it to name his daughter, a māori woman killed by his society and the consequences of his actions, something she doesn't feel any connection to.

john is an indigenous man, a māori man, who was born into a land settled by colonisers who rendered it rife with systems of oppression that alienated him from his culture, and led him to fall back on the same systems of oppression when he founded the nine houses. indigeneity describes a relation to colonisation and settler capital, primarily in the form of dispossession; when john declared kiriona his, did he do so as an indigenous man or as the emperor of an empire that ships populations between planets like cattle?

The thoughts I have about John the emperor colonizing space and remaking it in his image giving Gideon a Māori name (and not just a Māori name, but specifically a Christian biblical Māori name) as part of his claiming and remaking of her. Gideon/Kiriona being ethnically Māori ⁠— like, genuinely the daughter of someone ethnically and culturally Māori as that concept exists in the 21st century ⁠— but having no frame of reference for what that means because Māori culture has been dead for 10,000 years and her father killed it and stands as its last survivor. The last living person in the universe to be explicitly canonically Indigenous to Aotearoa gives his daughter a name in its language as a means of staking the flag of his empire on her and enlisting her into its colonial forces. There’s something intelligent to be said here and I’m not landing on it, but it does make me feel insane to think about.

Commander Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pa Snap Back To Reality Oops There Goes Gravity

It sounds funny and memey and at first glance, we see that it's preserving three pieces of cultural history. Let's go deeper.

Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead

From Shakespeare's Henry V, but also saying that we remember everyone who died because of you.

Kia Hua Ko Te Pai

From New Zealand's national anthem God Defend New Zealand, meaning "Let Goodness Flourish".

John is Māori and he speaks Te Reo Māori, as evidenced by him naming his daughter Kiriona (the Te Reo Māori translation of Gideon in the bible), and his friends saying he looked like a Māori pink panther.

John, a self-proclaimed God, failed to defend New Zealand. And he cannot Let Goodness Flourish. Making him say it aloud is massive fuck you.

Snap Back To Reality, Oops There Goes Gravity

Obviously a funny reference to Eminem's Lose Yourself, but there's two parts here.

"Snap Back To Reality" as in. Stop running from this and own up to what you did. This isn't a fun fairy tale. Humanity is fractured and broken because of you.

"Oops There Goes Gravity" as in. You destroyed the earth and MADE US FLEE INTO SPACE.

Making Jod say this aloud is a massive fuck you because her entire name

"Kiriona" is the Māori form of "Gideon".

In The Locked Tomb, Gideon going by Kiriona (in addition, mind you, to Gideon, since she still remembers and uses that name, as well) is an instance of a Māori woman connecting with an aspect of her Māori heritage she previously wasn't aware of due to having grown up an orphan.

Gideon getting the name Kiriona isn't her losing anything; it's her gaining something. Thematically, Kiriona in the third book has gotten or gets all the things she wanted in the first book (a Cohort officer commission, legitimacy, Crux dead etc), both so that she may know if she truly wants them or not and so that when she gets Harrow in her life, her whole life isn't just revolving solely around Harrow.

Anyway, I'd encourage members of the fandom to think about how they engage with the name "Kiriona" and how they frame Gideon using it in fandom discussions. Treating Gideon using the name Kiriona as something bad or wrong or lessening risks coming off as really insensitive.

currently thinking about names in tlt. names are very much a subject that is constantly touched on in the universe- names typically follow which house one belongs to. the most explicit of this is the Tridentati, but that extends to pretty much everyone we meet in book 1. when gideon fully adopts the role of harrowhark's caviler at the end, it's repeated for the second time that nav is a niner name.

and then we find out john changed his lyctor's names post loved-one-slaying. their pre-resurrection names are forgotten, revered as holy even within the private og lyctors. he takes their names, a symbol of where they're from and the earth they failed, and strips them to the bone. he tacks on their cavalier's name on the end as an afterthought, a tribute to the graveyard he turned his friends into. even then, the cavaliers names are lost. he replaces them with what he thinks represents them, despite there being very little chance he was close enough to them to come up with something more than an incredibly shallow understanding of who they are. pyrrha becomes Duty. christabel becomes Joy. we don't know cytherea's saint name, but considering how even john wasnt a fan of loveday, it would make sense why she wouldn't want to use an alias for the most important person in her life. even less so one created by the man who not only lead her to her death, but never even liked her. hell, john doesn't even bother using most of the cavalier's names censored in ntn.

and then we're brought to gideon's first name. she is (unwittingly by the ninth house, in their defense) named after g1. after all, wake's ghost's last words come from right after he pushes her out of the airlock. we know that gideon dies in htn and pyrrha takes over the meatsuit. we know from ianthe's blowup in ntn that john is in active grief. so, now imagine, you just lost every last person you loved, and this sad little girl gets brought to you and she's apparently your long lost totally dead daughter. cool, fine, whatever- you're god, so really death is nothing but some annoying hoops you have to jump through to get what you want. he turns her corpse into a construct, tethers her soul to it, and gives her a bedroom with those glow-in-the-dark ceiling stars and all. luckily there are a lot of newly vacant rooms, haha! and then, as he did with everyone his holy hands have touched, john renames her.

kiriona is pronounced closer to gideon than siri-ona in te reo māori. in typical john fashion, he strips her of her name representing where she is from, blessing her with a new one made in his image. and, once again, he turns her into a tribute for what he lost. g1deon is dead. john honors him by naming his daughter after his best friend, in a dead language, both of which john had a hand in murdering.

she can't be called gideon bc it's a memory of how John failed the person who was most loyal to him. she has to be called something similar as tribute. kiriona isnt his daughter, isn't a person, but instead is a vessel for all of his pain and regret. exactly like the ninth house, kiriona has been transformed into a tomb for her father's grief, and her renaming only cements that.

American locked tomb fans (and broader but I've specifically seen it from yanks) are very insistent on not knowing that aotearoa is a real place. she's not a fucking yank she's a kiwi.

all those deeply emotional moments? every single person sounds like a kiwi. jod is literally māori and so is gideon. kiriona is a māori name. those bitches aren't yanks. other places exist aside from america jfc you don't need to make up american headcanons about them I'm going to kill

I'm dying to know more about Gideon/Kiriona's feelings about her names as of the end of Nona...

The last time we had access to her internal monologue, she had just found out that she was named (inadvertently) for the man who killed her mother, and (probably more importantly) had been determinedly attempting to kill Harrow for the past several months. She also found out that her mother didn't really give a fuck about her, and was a bit of an asshole in general, and her father didn't exactly make a great impression in their brief interaction.

Then we see her again in Nona, and find that she's been given a new name, and has been made into "the Emperor's construct," and generally seems to be having a shit time of things even before the emotional whiplash of being kissed by Harrow's body only to find out that it's not actually Harrow.

So clearly out girl has been through A Lot and it wouldn't be surprising if she felt super conflicted about all the associations of both her old name and her new one.

How does she feel about the name Gideon now? We know that she isn't opposed to people continuing to use it, but does she resent it now that she knows where it comes from? I can imagine her going either way on G1deon having killed Wake, but there's no way she looks kindly on his repeated attempts to impale her adept. And when it comes to Wake there must be a ton of emotional turmoil of having imagined a mother who would have cared for her all through the hardships of growing up in Drearburh, only to find that her actual mother saw her as a thing, a bomb, a human sacrifice - there's so much shit for Alecto to explore here.

And then there's Kiriona - how much agency did she have in being renamed? Did Jod basically say "OK, you've got a new name now, kiddo," or was it more of a mutual thing (or even her own idea)? I could see it go either way - she doesn't seem to actively reject the name, but she could equally well be conflicted, apathetic, or actively like it (but have that be muted because she's clearly in a bad place).

I'm particularly curious about how the connection to her Māori ancestry plays out - I assume that historical Earth cultures are pretty alien to anyone born in the last few millennia, but she might find personal significance in it depending on how she relates to Jod. I hope Alecto explores this! It's hard to imagine her taking an interest in ancient history in general terms, but then again I firmly believe that she's smarter (and nerdier) than first impressions would indicate.

Speaking of which, one of my biggest questions going into Alecto is about what kind of relationship she and her dad have - how much of her sorrow and jadedness in the final act of Nona are about her feeling disempowered by John's treatment of her, versus everything else going on? Her comments in the barracks scene hint at her not having a lot of say in her current condition (particularly "I am the Emperor's construct" and "Nobody locks me up anywhere"), and I think the most likely interpretation of this is that the whole super-soldier shtick and new name and everything were imposed on her.

But I also find it plausible that she was fully on board with being the heir to the Emperor, and an indestructible badass, and all that, but now that she has these cool things she finds her life dull and unfulfilling (particularly in the absence of a certain small dark necrosaint). In this case, it would give an added poignancy to her reaction after killing Crux - that scene would then be symbolic of her overall lack of catharsis and pleasure in getting the things that she wants in the absence of Harrow.

I really hope that Alecto brings her some measure of catharsis, and a reunion with Harrow that eventually gets them to a happy ending, but damn is there a lot for her to work through before we get there.

"Kiriona" is just Te Reo for "Gideon", which makes me wonder why John Gaius (Implied to be of Māori descent or at least Kiwi) went with Greek/Roman naming conventions.

something that I actually find so interesting is that Kiriona does not match Johns usual naming conventions, like at all. John clearly has an affinity for these classical sounding names - but he gives her a Māori name, something I don’t think he’s done before. Hell, Gideon is name that HE chose in the first place! anyway this is me rambling but to me that suggests his naming of Kiriona is distinct from his other instances of renaming.

Yeah, that's a good point! When John is renaming things for his Empire, he defaults to Greek and Latin, or Hebrew by way of the Bible. Dominicus, Gideon, Augustine, thanergy. It's an interesting decision, considering his personal history. (I know there's a post already out there about his langauge choices, but I can't find it. Sorry, I'll keep looking)

So it does seem significant that Kiriona is apparently the first name from his own culture he's given in his new world.

Another thing that sets the name Kiriona apart from his other instances of renaming people and things is that it's not a new name. Kiriona is literally the name "Gideon" transliterated using only phonemes present in Te Reo. It's not actually the same name, because translation does have semantic connotation here, but it's not entirely a different name, either. Like Phillip and Felipe, or Peter and Pjotr. It's the same name in a different cultural context.

so Nona translates all the names she hears subconsciously & on instinct, I'm pretty sure, because she knows all the languages.

exhibit a: everyone calling Corona "Crown" might be the shortened version of her new BOE name, or people might be saying "Corona" which Nona then translates to "Crown." this is the one that holds the least water, i'm aware, which is why it comes first.

exhibit b: when Nona mentions Born in the Morning to Hot Sauce and Hot Sauce goes, "you mean Born in the Morning," and Nona says "that's what I said." i believe she translated some of the name back wrong or used a synonym, causing Hot Sauce to correct her.

exhibit c: when Palamedes asks if Honesty's name is truly Honesty and Nona squirms and says that that's how she hears it - she can't be sure, because she might be translating his name from whatever it is into Honesty as soon as she hears it.

which all brings me to my point! Kiriona is Māori for Gideon (see screenshot below). I wouldn't be surprised if Nona just... translated her name automatically. that does beg the question of why she didn't translate Gaia to Earth, but someone smarter than me is gonna have to figure that out. maybe Gideon didn't change her name, maybe we're just being led to believe that she did to increase our sense of alienation?

In case y’all didn’t know yet, “Kiriona” is the name used for Gideon in the Māori translations of the Bible

This post started out as a tag ramble (& became longer than the actual post as per usual) after seeing @mayasaura‘s tags in this post about the origins of Kiriona Gaia’s name. Especially the part about Kiriona’s first name:

#also yeah kiriona is her given name spelled using the phonetics of Te Reo #which I'm mentioning bc which language it is specifically is somewhat important #given that it's the language of John's people #that he likely never learned to speak fluently due to the colonial governement's attempt to exterminate it #so thematically that's rather signifigant #she's the only other person he's allowing to share in the legacy of his lost home #(lost because he blew it to kingdom come but lets not bicker and argue over who killed who)

I think a lot about the implications of names in the Nine House following a very specific theme (ancient Greek, Latin, and Biblical first names, Latin-inspired arithmonic House names) but John gave his daughter the name Kiriona. This is very interesting to me, especially in light of what those tags say re: John being Māori but most likely not speaking the language of his people due to colonialism. We don’t have the full picture yet, but a lot of what we know points to John choosing to preserve some of the ~foundational mythology~ of western civilization when shaping his empire. A colonizing Empire, though we really don’t know if “space colonization” was John’s plan for the Houses all along or if he decided it later. (Also an Empire that’s in large % made up of descendants of historically colonized people so there’s that too). At the same time, John shares his own cultural heritage with his daughter – and his daughter only, as if it’s something to be kept between the two of them and better forgotten at large.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this and I’m sure a lot of the implications are going over my head, but I think the initial cultural mould of the Houses tells us something about John as a product of a society that valued one specific area of cultural history above all others, and John internalizing that to the extent that he reverted to those stories and those myths when he was looking for civilization building blocks. And then he went and turned to the language of his people when naming his newfound daughter. Maybe it’s a public vs. personal sphere thing, maybe he wants to wear a different hat as a long-lost father than he does as the God-Emperor, or maybe it’s just that by the time he finds out he has a daughter he’s over the whole ‘Classics names’ thing and sort of regretting those initial choices.

fwiw, John probably wasn’t very coherent in the early days (maybe early years?) so who knows if he actually put any planning into what he did. As a scientist he probably had a lot of Latin engraved in his brain so why not use that? Sounds very smart. But, also, the fact that our scientific classification is based on Latin is itself a product of western supremacy and so on so forth. It’s a tautology: I’m God now and I guess God likes ancient Greek and biblical themes as filtered down to us through the lenses of Western Christianity. Why? Because that’s what God does. I guess.

(Also: compare all of this with the Blood of Eden naming system where they chose random bits of human culture to preserve. Not those deemed worthwhile by the elites, just… random bits. Shakespeare but also an Eminem song and a verse of an anthem in an indigenous language. That last one especially is Curious and tbh it’s the only detail giving me pause from jumping 100% to the very obvious conclusion that BoE was founded by the descendants of the FTL ships just because of who was on those ships and what cultural resources they would’ve brought along. But that’s a whole different speculation.) 

Kiriona = Gideon in the te reo Māori translation of the Bible

In other words, Jod kept Gideon's name but in his own language.

The Locked Tomb: Name Worldbuilding Thoughts

Okay, so Kiriona is the te reo Māori form of Gideon. That's a tangent to what this post is actually about, but some members of the fandom aren't aware of this, so it's good to mention is periodically.

Alright: within the Empire of the Nine Houses, I don't think "Gideon" is seen as a masculine name. Now, in our world, Gideon is of course masculine.

But the saints' have been forgotten. The only other Gideon that Gideon could meet within the Empire would be her namesake. Ditto for everyone else -- and most would never learn his name, just his title.

No one within the Empire hears Gideon's name and thinks "Wow! What a masculine name you have!" They think "Wow! I've never heard that name before!"