Weird, specific thing of mine.
I like to think Hylia’s complete name is Hyliatoan.
“What a weird specific thing”, yeah? Well. It has an explanation. See, I’ve always been curious of why do we have four Light Spirits, ‘cause we only had three Goddeses. This was until Skyward Sword showed us we had forgotten one of the deido, the Goddes Hylia. Now, you’re probably thinking... “but the fourth spirit is called Ordona”. Well... No. English isn’t my first language, so I’ve always known Ordona with a different name. And, fun fact: everyone does. English is the only language where they completely changed Latoan’s name. Yes, Latoan. Remember that time they told you Ordona’s name was just another version of Farore’s? It may be true, but it isn’t the original purpose and Latoan(e)/Ratoane/Ratoanu (ラトアーヌ) isn’t another facet of the Forest deido. Ordon is named Toaru/Toal (トアル), too, and it is a pun in Japanese.
True, there are many naming differences with all the deido and spirits. For example, Nayru’s name translation should be Nehru/Neroo/Nelle (ネール). In fact, Lanayru’s name is Lanelle/Ranelle/Raneru (ラネール, adding the ラ). Farore is Furoru/Furor/Furol (フロル) (which happens to be similar to Flor, flower in Spanish; but it may just be a coincidence) and Faron is Firone/Filone (フィローネ; keeping only フ and ロ from the original name). Finally, Eldin is Ordin/Oldin/Orudin (オルディン, from ディン Din, adding オル) (coincidence: it looks like Ordon). I like to think that, in ancient Hylian, the Goddesses’ names mean power, wisdom and courage respectively. So Din (DEEN) means power, Nayru (NAY-roo)/Nehru (NEH-roo)/Nelle (NEL) (Hylian dialectal differences) means wisdom and Farore (Fuh-ROH-reh)/Farore (Fuh-ROR)/Furoru (Fuh-ROH-roo) (dialects) means courage.
Now, as I established Hylia represents faith, then Hylia (HI-lee-uh) means faith. What does Toan mean, then? I like to think it’s a suffix meaning something like patron deity, as a way to highly regard Hylia as a patron goddes, as she was the closest one to the earth. So... something like “our faith”, “people’s faith”. Perhaps this works like Greek epithets, were deities take on different aspects depending on the epithets. Hyliatoan (hi-lee-uh-toh-UHN) eventually got shorter as people started forgetting her. When the light spirits arrived, the fourth one took on this name, Hyliatoan>Liatoan>Latoan.
If people, for instance, worshipped Nayru as their main deido, then it would be something like Nayrutoan/Nayretoan/Nellehtoan, and it would mean something like “our wisdom”, “the people’s wisdom”, “this place’s wisdom”; thus representing a more specific facet of Nayru regarding to her relationship with the people.
Some interesting additions: the spring dragons are originally called Neldra/Nerudora/Nerudra (ネルドラ), Oldra/Ordra/Orudora (オルドラ) and Furodra/Frodra/Furodora (フロドラ). Obviously the common theme is ドラ, I guess from ドラゴン doragon, dragon. I suppose its English equivalent would be Naydra (accurate), Eldra and Farodra. Perhaps we could say these are aspects of the goddesses too, with dra meaning dragon or elemental spirit in Hylian.
