Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[DosTuMai]

I've read and re-read this post. Really. You're worse than children.
This is internet spaceships and your arguing about make-believe? Nonsense. Really, how old are you two, 5?

My view is this - and I'll keep it short and sweet: there is no end-all and be-all in RP. You play your character and just get on with the wild fantasy about being an ex-secret agent demi-mortal that flies spaceships with enough firepower to blow up a small moon.
Adding content is never going to please everyone, but lets give people the room to create and make their RP that much more enjoyable.
/rant

[Seriphyn]

This Amarrad stuff is pretty damn cool looking. Nice to see some stuff that gives a more Arabic/Persian flavour to Amarr, they really have the potential to have a sort of futuristic Persian thing going on, with women in neck to toe, sleeveless robes and whatnot. With Ni-Kunni now looking unmistakably Arab it's \o/

[Horatius Caul]

Cheers Seri.

If anyone wants a PF indication that Amarr use arabic-style writing, I would like to offer this (the scribbles below the third sign):



Should also offer a hint to my previous question.

[Mitara Newelle]

This Amarrad stuff is pretty damn cool looking. Nice to see some stuff that gives a more Arabic/Persian flavour to Amarr, they really have the potential to have a sort of futuristic Persian thing going on, with women in neck to toe, sleeveless robes and whatnot. With Ni-Kunni now looking unmistakably Arab it's \o/

Mitty commonly wears an abaya when off duty

[Horatius Caul]

Another slow day at work, with a page on perso-arabic script open and a sketch pad full of ink:

(the) Khanid

EDIT:

amarrad

[Horatius Caul]

Hmm... I'm wondering, if I should scrap my lettering scribbles and just use persian transliteration instead.

فر ا یخنیتیاست رسا زخن یخی اجد
دی چون واپلاتست تا فر ا صحیفه جارو خیس دچجرت
ا پلاتسن واپلاتست تا ایجاد مجام تینر وادت
تا کاجو یتلچ ذیل  وادت
ا چرم ، براران یخ ۱:۴ -

ا همان ا امرو فرو ا دونجا هورت ، تا ا دونجا فرو والوروش هورت
ا انله اتان امرو تینر رهن کوچلت ان ا کوتیجان فن ا دونجا پور، تا نیج دونجا واشفت
ویچ ا رشیوس آمار یین یتیستیریم ا اینسان همنو اجد کارالماسط
ا تشان تیسیندو حرکت یین المته جنیلق ، تا ا توشمان یکینخو یین المته تسل ات چوو اجد الصمت
ا مزه کچو آمار رشجواج وادت درمان یین ا کوچ کسم تا ا کوتیج وخب
دنتیاست سونر، ا رشجواج ا خیس جار فهایفن واخایت، تا هو جختی دچجرت
ا چرم ، بران یخ ۱:۱۴ -

[Seriphyn]

Mitty commonly wears an abaya when off duty

Really?  awesome, nice to know I'm not alone in dressing a character in futuristic variants of M Eastern wear (Anette wears kercheifs and whatnot on her head when she goes to the Empire). Woop.

Equally awesome is that Amarrad stuff there, Horatius.

[DosTuMai]

Mitty commonly wears an abaya when off duty

Really?  awesome, nice to know I'm not alone in dressing a character in futuristic variants of M Eastern wear (Anette wears kercheifs and whatnot on her head when she goes to the Empire). Woop.

Equally awesome is that Amarrad stuff there, Horatius.

Dossie can be found wearing qipao or cheongsam a lot. Unless she's just been working.

[Invelious]

Based on whats happening here. What would our Amarish names be?

I'm not that fond of translating proper names, but I imagine Invelious' title would render as: Reshjvajarr Man - 'The Emperor's Hand' or Man Reshjvaju - 'The Hand of the Emperor'

EDIT: And, of course, there's a world of difference between Amarish (which is much younger than Amarrad and enjoys machine translation) and Amarrad.

I fully support this. Awesome work brother.

[Horatius Caul]

Based on whats happening here. What would our Amarish names be?

I'm not that fond of translating proper names, but I imagine Invelious' title would render as: Reshjvajarr Man - 'The Emperor's Hand' or Man Reshjvaju - 'The Hand of the Emperor'

EDIT: And, of course, there's a world of difference between Amarish (which is much younger than Amarrad and enjoys machine translation) and Amarrad.

I fully support this. Awesome work brother.

You may be interested to know that I may have devised an explanation for Latin name endings (-us, -ius, -ios, -ious). You see, they all render the same way in Persian, and they all sound the same anyway, and I've already started applying the -ios suffix to a meaning (domain, land, country) in Amarrad.

So bear with me...

To my knowledge, there is a sparse number of PF characters that have such a suffix in their names.
Emperor Damius III, who initiated the war of conquest against the Minmatar
Commodore Barius, who explored some nullsec
Dakos, the late brother of King Khanid

Damius would have been Emperor around 400 years after the end of the Moral Reforms, which in my book would mean the Empire was using the new state language Amarish while Amarrad took a backseat role. It is however quite likely that the Old Tongue would continue to serve as inspiration for Amarrian names for a long time to come.

The Amarrad word damios means duchy (literally "lands of the city"), and while it might seem a strange thing to name a boy, it might offer some possibilities of Amarr culture. Consider that all Amarr nobility are addressed by their first names - "Empress Jamyl", "Lord Victor", etc.. Usually this likely comes from the fact that many nobles would be from the same large families and everyone can't go by "Mr. Sarum" at the Sarum Prime court, and lower holders likely adopted the custom from there.

However, it gives rise to its own problems: "Hi, I'm Lord Joe." "Lord Joe who?" "Lord Joe Kador, you simpleton!" "The Lord Joe Kador of Kamda, Lord Joe Kador of Zorozih or the Lord Joe Kador of Pezarba?" "Execute this man, and fetch me a better first name!"

I believe what happened was that Holders (royal and lower alike) started working hard to figure out unique and place-descriptive names for their children. Rather like the European thing of referring to people by where they came from (da Vinci, von Mecklenburg) but as first names, and usually more poetic. It served both as a sign of prestige (first son of a family would often find himself named after the land he was to inherit) and as way of associating a face not just with a name but also a place of origin.

Emperor Damius' name, in this interpretation, would mean that his birthright was originally mainly associated with the domain of a notable city (dam). This also shows where in life he started out, in a way. Though of course the value of his nominal duchy might vary depending on if it was at the Minmatar fringe or on Amarr Prime, his very name would eternally mark him as City Boy.

Eventually this use also faltered, mainly as the royal families established themselves and famous names started being cycled endlessly anyway. Some families in certain parts still make occasional use of this toponym naming convention, but mainly the -us/-os/-ous names you see today are the names of famous ancestors recurring in the family line.

Translated literally with this interpretation, Horatius' name (hor-ata-ios) would mean "the Yellow Ancestor Lands."

And if we find a translation for invel we can find out what Invelious means  

tl;dr: Latinate name endings can be backformed into Amarrian personal names based on place names.

[Invelious]

    Will there finally be a meaning to a name I made up out of thin air 

[Horatius Caul]

Oh, and I was planning to do something nice for when I got 1000 thread views, but I suppose that brain-dump will serve for now. 

[Horatius Caul]

   Will there finally be a meaning to a name I made up out of thin air 

I haven't been able to track down anything resembling "invel" in my real-life sources, but I have gone through the existing Amarrad glossary and may have some poetic suggestions that may suffice, mainly approaching this from the angle of a place name, which means it can be quite mangled as far as etymologies go:

I'm thinking that in may come from ikhni ("first"), or perhaps ihyn ("to" or "for")

vel might be short for valorush ("existence") or maybe vhiellth ("revelation")

The result might be something like "The Lands for Existence", "The Domain of Revelation", "The Country of First Revelation" or "The Land of the First Existence"

If it's a name referring to a place name, it may be an ancient name for Earth or the New Eden system, a famous location on Athra, or maybe just a mythological location mentioned in Scripture.

Might indicate that the proper pronunciation of the name is Ih'n-(val'/vh'll)-ios or something 

[Horatius Caul]

<rambling>

Was looking through some Evelopedia pages in hope of mining some data for this project, and I found some interesting fan conjecture:

A second interesting feature of the family names is, that by an new takeover in the family, the new head of the family lost his nomen gentile and praenomen. He kept just his cognomen, so that Garkeh (praenomen) Khanid (nomen gentile) Khanid II (cognomen) beomes to just Khanid II. Another example: If had Dakos become the new head, Naladon Khanid Dakos, would become just to Dakos.The cognomen is also used inside the narrower family circle and in the news. Family memebers outside of the succession, like related by marriage, may not take a cognomen, like the grand admiral of the royal navy Zidarez Khanid.

This would be the Roman method of naming, having a first name, a "clan" name and a name of the family within that clan. i.e: Gaius (praenomen) Octavius (gentile) Thurinus (cognomen), later modified by a bunch of adoptions and honorifics to become Gaius Iulius Caesar Augustus.

Pretty sure Dakos would be the praenomen of Dakos Khanid, and I don't think we've seen any indication of sub-family or additional given names in PF, but it's still a good base to work from, even if the Amarr approach the different names from another direction.

For example, as noted in my wall of text above, the Amarr seem to emphasize the praenomen of its nobles - unlike Roman names where the given name was almost always ignored in favour of the family name.

If we return to my conjecture of place-naming, it's possible that the Amarr have/had Tria Nomina with a praenomen (given name, possibly several), toponym (associated place name), nomen gentile (family name) and potentially also cognomen (sub-family name or nickname).

It seems likely that if the structure was ever rigid, it's now probably turned rather fluid. As people by necessity or prestige mainly became known by their toponym, those toponyms may have re-entered use or shifted to be considered praenomen. With a more extensive number of praenomen, the cognomen as a differentiator would be rendered practically useless - so Amarr names today would likely simply be rendered praenomen + nomen gentile.

In certain large noble families (such as the royal houses) you would probably find some sort of sub-family name structure (separating the core of the family from satellite lines that are still related but hardly considered a part of the royal hierarchy), and those families would likely be driven by convention to use their sub-family name as their surname instead of the core family's name. Looking at it again, you might have something like:

First name(s) + Family name + House name (when applicable)

I know that Merdaneth has named his character Ubar-Sarum. Depending on how the family name is supposed to be regarded, the name could be de-constructed into:

Merdaneth (First name) Ubar (Family) Sarum (House)

or

Merdaneth (First name) Ubar-Sarum (Family) Sarum (House)

Horatius' name would be:

Horatius Kheed Zeremassa (First names) Caul (Family) Sarum (House)


Amarrad terms:
First name - negesh iszenu (lit: name of human/person)
Family name - negesh fhaidu (lit: name of father) or negesh atanu (lit: name of ancestors, usually reserved for family names of long history and perceived esteem)
House name - negesh hedienu (lit: name of house)

</rambling>

[scagga]

An interesting thread.  

I spent time over the years when I used to play EvE analysing what I interpreted to be the Amarrian language.  As a speaker of Persian and Arabic, I recognised many similarities in the spelling of words. Based on looking at system names and the names of significant characters, my view is that the etymology stems from Persian, Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin - in that order.  I will elucidate.

----------------

There are reasons why I feel that Persian is the dominant root language for Amarrian;

The nuances of the Persian language, an ancient language, lend themselves to Amarrian attributes - the language is florid with words and modes of speech that denote degrees of respect, multiple words for degrees of trust, idioms rooted in religion and bazaar-culture etc.  There are words that are concepts in themselves, that cannot be directly translated.

When speaking very formally, the language has enough beautifying adjectives to markedly extend a regular sentence - which is why it was adopted in the royal courts and used as the language for poetry in the indian subcontinent.  When trying to insult someone, it can routinely be done with such subtlelty as to be done with polite words.  Even when trying to be rude, the language does not sound offensive to those who do not understand it.  

Here's a video of spoken farsi (persian):
Democracy 1/4: Persian (Farsi) Readings

1) This is Farsi spoken with a significant westerner's accent.  
2) Listen to his translation as he goes along.
3) Compare the sounds you hear to the sounds you could make out when reading Amarr words from the map

Examples of words (taken from the game/map) that sounds Persian

Ardishapur
Jarzalad
Hoona
Kador
Aband
Gasavak
Peyiri
Jedandan
Danyana
Sasta
etc

A single example about words in the farsi language for degrees of trust:

"These words include: e‘temaad, etminaan, and e‘teqaad. E‘temaad has wider use in business
transactions than the other two. When someone has e‘temaad in someone else, he can trust him with his
money and family, and he is sure that his friend will not leave him alone in a moment of need.
Etminaan serves in phrases such as “peace of mind” and “to rest assured,” or in cases in which one
government has requested assurances from another. E‘teqaad means profound trust or belief, with
religious connotations. Conviction in God, for example is affirmed using e‘teqaad."

Source: http://www.herzliyaconference.org/_Uploads/2614Iranianself.pdf
Recommended read!

--------

Persian is a softer-sounding language than the semitic Hebrew and Arabic languages.  The harsher single and double-syllable words appear .

Arabic:
Uhodoh
Chanoun
Khafis
Jarizza

I could guess which words sounded Hebrew, but my rudimentary understanding of the language would be based on style rather than resemblance to actual words.

-----

My view on the Latin influence on Amarrian

This is where things get a bit more difficult to accurately describe.

I believe that Latin words in the Amarr language are not integral to the Amarr language itself, but are words that come from the vocabulary of the Amarr religion. It is important to distinguish this from saying that latin exists as a complete language in the EvE world - I'm not suggesting that at all!  

My view is that 'whole' Latin words come from the vocabulary of the Amarr religion and are recognised as such when speaking Amarrian.  I don't think that latin words form an integral part of the common Amarrian language and are seen as having a root from a language that the Amarrians themselves do not know.  However, the use of such words is associated with religion and thus have a tendency to be used by clergy/educated/higher nobility.