Trader Vic Bergeron said he made it in 1944 at his Oakland restaurant with 17-year-old J. Wray & Nephew Jamaican rum, and that his Tahitian guest’s reaction — ‘maita’i roa ae’, roughly ‘out of this world’ — named it. Donn Beach of Don the Beachcomber disputed this and claimed a 1933 original, but his drink is a different build. Vic’s version is the one the name now means, and the one reconstructed here.