where they discovered Quaoar. Through Internet searching, the team eventually decided upon the name Kwawar, the creator god of the Tongva people indigenous to the area around Los Angeles. The Tongva were the first inhabitants of the Los Angeles Basin, where Michael Brown's institute, the California Institute of Technology, is located. According to Brown, the name "Quaoar" is pronounced with three syllables, and Trujillo's website on Quaoar gives a three-syllable pronunciation, , as an approximation of the Tongva pronunciation . The name can be also pronounced as two syllables, , reflecting the usual English spelling and pronunciation of the deity Kwawar. In Tongva mythology, Kwawar (or Quaoar) is the creation force of the universe, singing and dancing deities into existence. Quaoar has no form or gender, although the deity is generally referred to with masculine pronouns. He first sings and dances to create Weywot (Sky Father), then they sing Chehooit (Earth Mother) and Tamit (Grandfather Sun) into existence. As they sang and danced deities into existence, the creation force became more complex as each joined the singing and dancing. Eventually, after reducing chaos to order, they created the great seven giants that upheld the world. They then gave rise to the lower animals and eventually the first man and woman, Tobohar and Pahavit. Upon their investigation of names from Tongva mythology, Brown and Trujillo realized that there were existing members of the Tongva and considered contacting them for permission. They consulted tribal historian Marc Acuña, who suggested that the name Kwawar was appropriate for the newly discovered object. The name was then changed to Qua-o-ar as this spelling was preferred among the Tongva. However, the name's spelling was later reconsidered by Brown due to its ambiguous pronunciation resulting from the four-vowel combination uaoa—no other word in the English language has this particular combination of vowels. (Indeed, even if one takes the u to be part of the initial consonant qu, it then only appears at Kaoani but it also appears in proper nouns such as Laoag and Paraoa) Regardless, the name and discovery of Quaoar were publicly announced in October, though Brown had not sought approval of the name by the IAU's Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (CSBN). Quaoar's name was announced before the official numbering of the object, which Brian Marsden—the head of the Minor Planet Center—remarked in 2004 to be a violation of the protocol during the time