Message to Maya and Alejandro: Cris Carter called and he'd like his black oil back.
These two have the distinct odor of marketing and demographics foisting a character model onto the writers. I'm surprised Maya's name isn't really Mary. As in Virgin. It was so suspect that I looked up the name's origin (because many writers bury their intent in character names):
- In Spanish it's a harmless shortened version of Amalia, originally Amelia or Emilia, which is a combination of the Latin "Emilia" which means "rival," and the German "Amalia," which means "to labor, struggle." OK. I probably should have stopped to look up the origin of "Alejandro" here, especially because the German version is a term for a child born with a birth defect, specifically without limbs.
- In Hindi, it is Sanskrit for "dream, illusion." Interesting.
- This is the kicker: In Russian/Cyrillic, Maya is their version of .... drum roll ... Mary.
Someone put WAY too much thought into this, and I wasn't the first. Now all we need is for Peter to see a future vision of Maya in his pancakes and some Spanish overdubs and we have Heroes being sold in early syndication for a nice sum to Telemundo. Or something like that. It just has that "holy cow, someone actually thought that wasn't offensive and was a good marketing plan" kind of smell to it.
Am I being too cynical? I thought many of the worst characters on the show were subtle stereotypes, but it wasn't until these two characters showed up that I was consciously thinking about it throughout the show.
FWIW, Alejandro is of course the Spanish version of Alexander, which is Greek for "man's defender, warrior."
