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so_out_of_ideas) wrote2008-05-17 07:19 am
so_out_of_ideas) wrote2008-05-17 07:19 am
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Ka'andesi Stuff
This post may be of interest to Land and Sky readers. It deals with the naming conventions and ceremony of naming among the Ka'andesi. There is a spoiler for Episode 3 if you are paying attention. Sorry about that but I only had one character whose name had all the elements.
Naming Conventions Among The Ka’andesi
There are four clans which make up the Ka’andesi Peoples. The Ch’lliear are the people of the great plains. The Ch’anrad are the forest people. The Os’aru are the mountain dwellers, and the Ilel’quaeld are the desert born.
The clans have a common ancestry, originating from interrelated migrant groups from somewhere in the Unknown Regions who settled on the Ka’andesi homeworld along the floor of the Oneg Valley. In the 15,000 plus years since their migration from Oneg, each clan has developed in its own way, with distinct language and cultural traditions which are heavily rooted in the relationship between the people and the land on which they live. There are, however, certain commonalities which provide a basic familiarity and a bond of shared heritage between the clans. One of those is similarity with which all four clans choose names. For the Ka’andesi Peoples, a name serves as a marker to indicate family and clan of origin and a message to the stranger about what the individual values most in himself.
When a child is born, he is given a name by his parents. At one year of age, there is a confirmation of naming ceremony in which the name is altered slightly, with the addition of a syllable that can affect its meaning in a number of ways. A second name can sometimes be added. This re-naming tradition comes from the fact that children did not always survive past the first year of life. If the child has had a history of illness or some other problem has occurred within the family during the year, the name is more likely to be changed or a second name added. This is symbolically a new beginning for the child (and family), and an affirmation of the child’s identity as Ka’andesi by the community.
There is also an adult naming ceremony in which a Ka’andesi chooses a new name for himself upon the completion of certain coming of age tasks and rituals. The childhood names are not abandoned but incorporated with the chosen name into a completion of identity.
The ceremony is essentially the same for all the clans, and begins with this statement which is spoken by one of the presiding officials:
This is the name given you by your mother and father. They named you this as they placed their hopes for your future upon you. Now, you will choose a new name, one that you choose as you name your future you desire. In the same way that your mother and father became one, united in body and soul to create you, so now your two names will become one in you, naming who you were, who you are, and who you shall be.
In all four clans, a child is named for both of his parents. His mother’s chosen name is appended with a prefix at the end of his given name and chosen names. The name of his father’s family is included after his clan name. In this way, the heritage of both parents is recognized and given equal weight. So, a Ka’andesi name follows this pattern:
[Given name 1-by parents at birth] [Given name 2- by parents at 1 year of age] [Chosen name][matronymic-mother’s name with the prefix ir attached][Clan name- Ch’lliear, Ch’anrad, Os’aru, or Ilel’quaeld][patronymic-father’s family name]
Chosen names are not usually spoken to non Ka’andesi. Generally, a Ka’andesi away from the homeworld will introduce himself simply with his given name and use “Ka’andesi” as a surname. Among Ka’andesi of different clans, adults prefer to use their chosen names unless they are with family or close friends.
In soul-joining ceremonies (either marriage—teakeindane— or the rite of sh’talteaindera that bonds siblings from different families) both individuals add the name of the other to their own. A female’s family name always precedes a male’s. In cases where participants in the ceremony are the same sex, the name of the elder goes first.
So, when Sayqua is introduced to the story, she would use the name “Sayqua Ka’andesi,” since at that point she does not know Obi-Wan’s identity.
By the end of RotS, her full name should be
Zara Sayqua Naaira ir’Sennequa Naberrie Kenobi Skywalker.
Which is a mouthful, but it breaks down like this:
Given name 1=Zara (birth name)
Given name 2=Sayqua (given by her father after her mother’s death in childbirth)
Chosen name=Naaira (meaning wanderer, chosen by herself at age 13)
Matronymic=ir’Sennequa (her mother was Sennequa)
Family name 1=Naberrie (taken after she and Padme do the sh’talteaindera)
Patronymic=Kenobi (her father’s family name; Naberrie now precedes because Padme is the elder.)
Family name 3=Skywalker (Anakin’s family name)
Naming Conventions Among The Ka’andesi
There are four clans which make up the Ka’andesi Peoples. The Ch’lliear are the people of the great plains. The Ch’anrad are the forest people. The Os’aru are the mountain dwellers, and the Ilel’quaeld are the desert born.
The clans have a common ancestry, originating from interrelated migrant groups from somewhere in the Unknown Regions who settled on the Ka’andesi homeworld along the floor of the Oneg Valley. In the 15,000 plus years since their migration from Oneg, each clan has developed in its own way, with distinct language and cultural traditions which are heavily rooted in the relationship between the people and the land on which they live. There are, however, certain commonalities which provide a basic familiarity and a bond of shared heritage between the clans. One of those is similarity with which all four clans choose names. For the Ka’andesi Peoples, a name serves as a marker to indicate family and clan of origin and a message to the stranger about what the individual values most in himself.
When a child is born, he is given a name by his parents. At one year of age, there is a confirmation of naming ceremony in which the name is altered slightly, with the addition of a syllable that can affect its meaning in a number of ways. A second name can sometimes be added. This re-naming tradition comes from the fact that children did not always survive past the first year of life. If the child has had a history of illness or some other problem has occurred within the family during the year, the name is more likely to be changed or a second name added. This is symbolically a new beginning for the child (and family), and an affirmation of the child’s identity as Ka’andesi by the community.
There is also an adult naming ceremony in which a Ka’andesi chooses a new name for himself upon the completion of certain coming of age tasks and rituals. The childhood names are not abandoned but incorporated with the chosen name into a completion of identity.
The ceremony is essentially the same for all the clans, and begins with this statement which is spoken by one of the presiding officials:
This is the name given you by your mother and father. They named you this as they placed their hopes for your future upon you. Now, you will choose a new name, one that you choose as you name your future you desire. In the same way that your mother and father became one, united in body and soul to create you, so now your two names will become one in you, naming who you were, who you are, and who you shall be.
In all four clans, a child is named for both of his parents. His mother’s chosen name is appended with a prefix at the end of his given name and chosen names. The name of his father’s family is included after his clan name. In this way, the heritage of both parents is recognized and given equal weight. So, a Ka’andesi name follows this pattern:
[Given name 1-by parents at birth] [Given name 2- by parents at 1 year of age] [Chosen name][matronymic-mother’s name with the prefix ir attached][Clan name- Ch’lliear, Ch’anrad, Os’aru, or Ilel’quaeld][patronymic-father’s family name]
Chosen names are not usually spoken to non Ka’andesi. Generally, a Ka’andesi away from the homeworld will introduce himself simply with his given name and use “Ka’andesi” as a surname. Among Ka’andesi of different clans, adults prefer to use their chosen names unless they are with family or close friends.
In soul-joining ceremonies (either marriage—teakeindane— or the rite of sh’talteaindera that bonds siblings from different families) both individuals add the name of the other to their own. A female’s family name always precedes a male’s. In cases where participants in the ceremony are the same sex, the name of the elder goes first.
So, when Sayqua is introduced to the story, she would use the name “Sayqua Ka’andesi,” since at that point she does not know Obi-Wan’s identity.
By the end of RotS, her full name should be
Zara Sayqua Naaira ir’Sennequa Naberrie Kenobi Skywalker.
Which is a mouthful, but it breaks down like this:
Given name 1=Zara (birth name)
Given name 2=Sayqua (given by her father after her mother’s death in childbirth)
Chosen name=Naaira (meaning wanderer, chosen by herself at age 13)
Matronymic=ir’Sennequa (her mother was Sennequa)
Family name 1=Naberrie (taken after she and Padme do the sh’talteaindera)
Patronymic=Kenobi (her father’s family name; Naberrie now precedes because Padme is the elder.)
Family name 3=Skywalker (Anakin’s family name)
no subject
I love the logic here for the giving of names - it reminds me a little, actually, of the way some cultures used to recite genealogies as part of the recounting of that people's traditional stories, as a way not only to give/preserve certain definitive events of the culture and provide a kind of time line or time scale from those events to the present, but also to unify all of the wealth of myth, tradition, and history from the distant past to the present. It also makes me think of a scene in Dune, when Jessica and the other Fremen women are remembering the slave raids on Rossak and Bela Tegeuse and such (that little scene, right after Alia's said how the child newest born to the clan looks just like a baby born to a woman on . . . Poritrin? . . . I think right before the raids), and, of course, the giving of Paul's secret name in the tribe (Usul) and the way he chooses a name for himself to be known by among all Fremen (Paul-Muad'dib). I like the idea that a person's name can carry so much information about who that person is and where he or she came from, from parents to clan to names both given by the parents and chosen by the individual. In a way, you carry your family and your clan and the hopes and dreams and traditions of family and clan everywhere with you, just in carrying your name. And you don't share your full name with those who aren't of your people, which to me speaks of the importance that these people assign to their clan and family and traditions.
no subject
It really doesn't surprise me that you've tried to do it too. I've always been fascinated with names and their significance to the people who carry them. When I wrote my first stories as a kid I would spend hours and hours poring over name books, writing down names and the etymology of them, tracing certain names through various cultures and looking at the differences between root meanings in whatever the original language was and the cultural meanings that the name had taken on. (Okay, I was a strange kid.)
The Ka'andesi are loosely based on a culture I made up once before. (More and more loosely the more I write about them, but whatever.) So the basic pattern of the names comes from there, but the rules themselves came out of trying to figure out where the name Ben came from, how to incorporate a chosen name without suddenly having an Obi-Wan whose name wasn't Obi-Wan (which is just wrong) and how to keep the lineage of both parents in the name and still have his name be Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The first thing I thought of when I started trying to organize it all was the idea of genealogy recitation, then I thought of Alia and that scene you mention, and of course Usul and Paul-Muad'dib and the reasons that both names were important to the Fremen. So I wanted to do something that echoed those concepts without actually taking them from Herbert's work. Then I had to have a way for Fox and Dannik to move through the rest of the galaxy without using the name Kenobi openly because it wouldn't be too hard to trace them back if Watto knew a couple of guys named KENOBI. Once I had it actually organized in my mind, I had this moment of revelation where it's like "my gosh--he's Ka'andesi and he only knows half his name. No wonder he knows something's missing already. He should be carrying his whole family and clan and personal identity in his name by now and he ISN'T." So. Yes. lol.
no subject
*Snerk* I did the same thing with names and with adjectives. I had name books and thesauruses and a really big dictionary that I used to keep by me constantly, when I was little, and would scribble in my notebooks. One of the nice thing about computers is that you can look up things like the meanings of names and their various spellings in related cultures so easily online.
*Lol!* Why am I not surprised to find out that it all comes down to Obi-Wan and his name? I cheated on the "Ben" thing by making it a shortened version of an old honorific for extremely respected Jedi - "Bendu" - rather than trying to make it a name that belongs somewhere in with the Obi-Wan Kenobi somewhere, but I am entirely unsurprised that you'd come up with a naming system to explain how his given name could also be Ben as well as Obi-Wan. I did the same kind of thing with all of those Nabooian names that end in various vowels (especially -é) to make the specific ending of the name designate the order (and order by gender) in which an individual child was born to his/her parents, and then gave them traditions of giving newborns different names than their given legal ones (to help protect against possession) and private honorary names given when a child reaches adulthood and also for there to be a habit of presenting a Queen/King or Senator (as someone acting as an elected avatar of the Nabooian's concept of the Force as the Lady of life/light/the seas, in the same way a King/Queen does, only with a larger realm of responsibility) with a regnal name that may even, eventually, for those well-loved, lead to other formal epithets/names. I think Padmé's full name, in my AU series, is Sabia (which is her shadow/childhood name) Padmé (legal first name) Amidala (which is of course her regnal name) Sharian (legal middle name) Arianeira (which is her blood name, to signify womanhood) Naberrie (given last name) Skywalker (given name by marriage, though this was only ever known to a handful of individuals outside of her family), with two epithets being assigned to her in the wake of TPM and in the wake of AotC, Maha'kamala and Maha’dhairya, and another being assigned to her after her death, Maya’sundari (all variants of one kind of another of historical epithets for or other aspects of Lakshmi/Mahamaya/Kamalatmika). LOTS of names for such a little slip of a thing, eh?
*Grins hugely* I am SO not surprised that the way the names work for the Ka'andesi came about after such a thought process. That SO very much makes me want to hug Dune to myself and then hug you and then hug the Ka'andesi!
no subject
Heh, yes, I have to be very careful when I go looking for names to open new browser tabs or I end up following things for so long that I get lost and forget which name I was actually looking at or picking or what-have-you.
Oh my gosh. Yes, that's quite a few names, and I'll have to write down not to end up using anything too close to those in Land and Sky for anybody related to Padme or else we're going to get really confused...
I had two characters in the original story that the Ka'andesi ideas were generated from who had seventeen names apiece. And I could actually keep them straight for a while. lol.
I shall be hugging Dune and the Ka'andesi with you, so...hehe.