After the issue with Kiora's (ex-Atua) name, I thought Creative would be more restrictive about using real cultural names of deities, but now there's a character named Inti. Since Inti was the Tawaintisuyu's ("Inca's") name for the Sun God, do you think it was a conscient decision or more of an unnoticed coincidence?
It's not a binary good/bad thing to do kind of decision. Context matters, and this sort of assumption flattens diverse cultures.
Kiora's last name of Atua was changed because it tread on Polynesian beliefs, yes. You can see Doug's post about it here. I don't know if no one intended for Kiora's name not to be a homophone for Kia Ora, the Maori greeting, given her nature but that's irrelevant at this point. It was changed because the community asked for it be changed, as it wasn't something they used casually. My understanding is it's a phrase that's a blessing. I don't know all the specifics, but we can agree there's a difference between naming a character 'Praise Jesus' and 'Jesus Lopez', yeah?
An important factor in this discussion is whether or not a culture uses that name for like, first names. Is there a taboo against naming individuals after that god? For some cultures there is, or for others there isn't. I wasn't part of the team creating the set, but it's pretty easy to find a bunch of real people named Inti online. I would imagine, in that context, that there isn't a taboo, or as much of a taboo that would upset the south american community about it, then.
And that's not getting into the fact that Inti was created six years ago for the original Ixalan (he's not a new character), or that the phonemes making up the name are extremely common in Nahuatl as well.
Taking a look at other Magic characters, Chandra is also named after a god. Chandra is the god of the moon in Hinduism. While I won't say it's a great use of the name - Magic mostly used Indian names to make their characters sound 'exotic' and 'fantasy' for many years - it's also an extremely common regular name for folks. Although both Wizards and 99.9% of Magic players mispronounce it as Shawndra. Heck, I even do it because no one knows who I'm talking about if I say 'chundruh'.
But anyway, I've gotten a lot of questions in a similar vein to this that start from an assumption of wrongdoing but coming from very flat assumptions of how to tackle adapting other cultures and adapting versus appropriating, and I hope I've helped explained why it's never as simple as 'x thing is bad across all other cultures'. This is, of course, why having cultural consultants is so important and why it's become a priority for Wizards.
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