Tedako (太陽子, 'child of the sun'; from teda/tida, the Old Ryukyuan and Okinawan word for the sun) is the solar deity at the centre of the Ryukyuan cosmos as it appears in the Omoro Sōshi. In the creation chants the sun-lord stands above the act of creation, ordering the deities Amamikyu and Shinerikyo to form the islands and the first people. The same word served as a sacral royal title: the kings of Ryukyu were addressed as tedako, the sun's child, binding the legitimacy of the Shō dynasty to the solar cult, much as the supreme priestess and the great groves of the kingdom were oriented toward the sun and the eastern otherworld. Modern Ryukyuan linguistics (Read 2012; Kupchik 2021) traces teda to a securely reconstructible Proto-Ryukyuan form, variously connected with Japanese tendō (天道) or with an Austronesian word for the sun. Because the divine sun-lord and the human king are not sharply separated in the sources, Tedako functions simultaneously as a cosmic deity and as the divinised office of kingship.