So, the reason the lion now named Nyota was once named "Nearlitee" was... I heard the name spoken in a documentary once, and tried spelling it myself (keep in mind, this was 1998 and there were no convenient African dictionaries one google search away). Going by my memory, the word sounded more like "nia-leh-ti", but I was new to English so whatever. :P

Anyway, according to the documentary the word meant "star" - and in this, the character did remain consistent to his root (Nyota means exactly that in Swahili).

So here he is anthropomorphized, because uh... why not I guess. The original went to a friend from the UK, who went by the name "Utlah" on the TLKFAA/Wild Fury forums. :)

Dated 2001.