I go by Rifkele dos Ketsele in my visual art life, and it’s close to my name in real life. The name Rifkele is a diminutive of Rifke, which is “Rebecca” in Ashkenazi Hebrew. The Modern Hebrew equivalent is Rivka.
In the 130-word minimalist constructed language Toki Pona, names are all adapted to a very small alphabet and a very simple syllable structure, but they otherwise follow the pronunciation in the languages they come from. The letters are a, e, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, s, t, u, and w, and syllables can only end in n, if anything. Syllables cannot begin with ti, ji, wo, or wu. There is no r in Toki Pona, so it has to be replaced with something else.
The Yiddish r is typically very guttural, technically a voiced uvular trill or voiced uvular fricative. This would be pronounced with a K in Toki Pona, yielding *Kikele. Kikele?! Oy vey! That looks too much like a slur for Jewish people in English. I don’t want that. But Yiddish r can also be an alveolar consonant, yielding *Likele. It’s not bad, but that’s not how I pronounce Yiddish. I didn’t learn to do a uvular trill for nothing!
Let’s take a look at Hebrew, going by the modern compromise pronunciation between Sephardi and Ashkenazi. Yes, yes, I know, but it’s how most Jews pronounce Hebrew nowadays. It’s how I learned to pronounce it. When I go to shul, it’s how we pronounce it. I’m not frum enough to pray or read the Torah in Ashkenazi Hebrew.
In Hebrew, my name is Rivka. The Hebrew r is a uvular approximant, pronounced by bringing the back of the tongue close to the uvula. Approximants in Toki Pona are always transliterated with either w or j. ji isn’t allowed, so Rivka has to become Wika. I’m a cat, which is a type of mammal (soweli), so I’m soweli Wika.
In the image at the top of the page, the name “Wika” is formed out of four Toki Pona words: wan, insa, kulupu, ante. This is not an accident, but a reference to the alienation I’ve felt most of my life, though it has significantly lessened in recent years. In bad or archaic Toki Pona, wan insa kulupu ante says “one inside a different group,” or more colloquially, perhaps “alone in a crowd.”
I know I’m not the only one to experience alienation, and so I’m not really alone even in this. But it’s a common feeling throughout my life, and thus important to my identity. If your name is Rivka, feel free to spell your name out of completely different Sitelen Pona symbols. It doesn’t even have to be important to your identity, but people often do this if they can. There’s a limited number of Sitelen Pona symbols to choose from, but it’s nice when you can do it.
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