I am pretty sure that the word "Matari" is actually a player creation that CCP picked up and started using.
Mata, Evanda, Else, Ulf or one of the other old-farts of minnie RP probably could confirm that, though.
I'm actually not enough of an old fart to know this stuff. What I can say is that CCP has used the term "Matari" often in, for example, ship and system descriptions, although my recollection is that in some recent rewrites they've edited that out in favour of "Minmatars".
I'm searching a thread on EM's website from early 2010 called
Minmatar PF. It's one of a few similar threads and I suspect there might be other sources which would do as well or better, but this shows the extent to which "Matari" was commonly used. And because some of the snippets are cool -- like the one telling where Parliament is located -- I'm going to quote at length. Feel free to skip this bit.
Krusual Mobile Library, Tanoo
Hiva Shesha's Shuttle
“The sands of time is a complex metaphor, and as historians, we must understand is meaning. We are not here to play in a sandbox and find all the hidden rocks. History is not the unraveling of truth or unearthing forgotten knowledge. Rather, ’the sands of time’ are mixed with our rational minds to form glass. We are opticians, further carving that glass into lenses, which are layered together. Sometimes the view becomes clearer; other times, opaque. We cannot change the sands of time: We can only sharpen our lenses.”
-Hiva Sheesha, A History of the Matari People
Metropolis
It has long been an established fact of civilization that wherever a seat of government lies, then so will a concentration of its subjects, the better to fuel the halls of bureaucracy. In this, the Republic has been no exception and in locating their Parliament and Justice Department in the Gedulf constellation, they guaranteed a huge population influx. This population needs supporting, and so some of the largest Matari corporations also have their head offices here, making the region bustle with activity, not unlike a large Metropolis.
Molden Heath
The common ground of the Heath, away from the bustling crowds of Heimatar and Metropolis, was in the days of the Elders committed as neutral ground between the Matari Tribes, to be claimed by none and developed by all.
[Hmmm... "in the days of the Elders"?]
Republic Fleet Firetail
The Firetail is modeled off a fighter frigate known as the Shamrock, a design used by a small, now-extinct pirate faction known as Lazari Dromitus. The blueprint found its way into the hands of Matari military forces after a raid on Lazari Dromitus's headquarters succeeded in killing its leader, thus beheading the organization and scattering its remnants to the four winds. It has since been improved upon and upgraded, and the Firetail is now a mainstay in most Republic Fleet patrols.
["Resurrect the Lazari!"]
Hel
Inspired by a vicious scissor-toothed shark indigenous to old-world Matar, the Hel is widely viewed as a sign of a Republic out for blood. Since the beginning of its development it has remained a project cloaked in secrecy, with precious few people aware of its progress and its capabilities, and its formal unveiling has come as a defiant slap in the face to many who formerly believed the Matari incapable of working at this scale of starship design.
Whatever comprises the soil of its roots, though, one thing is clear: from no-frills living quarters to grim, unadorned aesthetic, this ferocious behemoth has been designed for one purpose and one purpose only.
'Imagine a swarm of deadly hornets pouring from the devil's mouth. Now imagine they have autocannons.'
<i>-Unknown Hel designer</i>
[Full quote to keep in the autocannon-armed hornets.]
Legion Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration
From the moment Strategic Cruisers became a reality, there were whispers amongst the scientific community about the potential for advances in cloaking technology. They remained that alone for the longest time, with few involved in the reverse-engineering process willing to share any news of their discoveries. Everyone knew that, should the technology ever become a reality, the capabilities of the new Strategic Cruisers would change overnight.
The Amarrians are suspected to have developed cloaking technology for the Legion around the same time as the first capsuleer designs began to surface. For almost a full week, Minmatar rebel camps deep inside Heimatar and Metropolis were subjected to ruthless guerilla attacks, almost unprecedented in their ferocity and viciousness. Although initially confused by such a marked changed in their opponent's warfare philosophy, the Matari knew that each target had been a high profile objective for the Amarr Navy, and noted with deep suspicion how all of the squads had been spearheaded by Legions that could hit and fade with alarming ease. Few doubted who was behind the bloodshed. The Amarrians remained silent for the most part, the only official statement; that God's will had manifested itself in the heart of evil.
Minmatar Control Tower
The Matari aren't really that high-tech, preferring speed rather than firepower or involved technology. Unfortunately that doesn't apply very well to stationary objects, much to the liking of the Amarr Empire.
Amarrians call it a scrapheap of epic proportions. But don't underestimate these structures. Minmatar commanders usually have the last laugh when it comes to combat.
[Showing the use of "Matari" and "Minmatar" almost interchangeably. In this case, "Matari" as a noun for the people and "Minmatar" as an adjective, although in other cases there are other uses, particularly of the phrase "Matari tribes".
This text is repeated in all the control tower descriptions.]
Muninn
Hull: Rupture Class
Role: Heavy Assault Ship
Commissioned by the Republic Fleet to create a powerful assault vessel for the strengthening of the Matari tribes as well as a commercial platform for the Howitzers and other guns produced by the Fleet, Boundless Creation came up with the Muninn. Heavily armored, laden with turret hardpoints and sporting the latest in projectile optimization technology, this is the very definition of a gunboat.
Naglfar
The Naglfar is based on a Matari design believed to date back to the earliest annals of antiquity. While the exact evolution of memes informing its figure is unclear, the same distinctive vertical monolith form has shown up time and time again in the wind-scattered remnants of Matari legend.
Special Forces Command Post
Outfitted with makeshift sensor arrays and second-hand tactical data analysis equipment, these outposts will, to anyone not in the know, look like useless scrapyards. Which is exactly what the Matari would have you think.
Against that we also have CCP's old and apparently-newly-fashionable use of "Minmatars". To my ear this sounds about as comfortable as "Caldarian", but you get used to what you experience.
Minmatar Republic
The Minmatar Republic was formed over a century ago when the Minmatars threw out their Amarrians overlords in what is known as the Minmatar Rebellion. The Minmatars had the support of the Gallente Federation and to this day the two nations are close allies. Yet only a quarter of the Minmatars reside within the Republic, the rest is scattered around the world, including a large portion still enslaved within the Amarr Empire. Minmatars are independent and proud, with strong will and many tribal traditions.
What follows about mother/father meanings is conjectural.
"Matar" (the home planet) and "Pator" (Matar's star) are tantalisingly close to the highly-influential proto-Indo-European root words for "
mother" and "
father". Does this mean they're connected? Not necessarily. I admit that's it's an intriguing possibility, and given the diversity of possibilities in the many, many Matari clans I suspect there may be groups among the Matari who follow this interpretation.
A key reason I, myself, have doubts is that the idea of the "sun" being male seems to me to be inconsistent with the remarkably clear survival of Nordic myth and language which we see elsewhere among Minmatar naming. As a bit of a generalisation, in Germanic and Nordic cultures the sun is both female and grammatically feminine: see, for instance, the Wikipedia write-up about
Sól (Old Norse "Sun") or Sunna (Old High German, and existing as an Old Norse and Icelandic synonym). (This is, incidentally, in contrast to the Greek- and Latin-influenced cultures where the sun is male and the moon is female, which have influenced a lot of expectations even in the English-speaking world.) It doesn't feel comfortable to me. That doesn't mean it's wrong.
(Quite a bit here depends on whether you think the planet and star would have been named long before the collapse of the EVE gate or whether the names have arisen after the Dark Age. Also, if the wider star systems of the Republic were named or renamed at one time by a person who or organisation which thought that Old Norse mythology was a cool schema to adopt, and the Minmatar starship designing companies followed suit because that was the theme for space-stuff, a lot of the other conjecture about Old Norse and Matari links could go out the portal.)
I recall reading, although I cannot now find where, that "Minmatar" meant "Children of Matar", presumably in the sense of offspring of, or those-nurtured-by, Matar. The phrase "Children of Matar" is definitely used rhetorically in that way in the wider EVE corpus. I can't find an original source for this now, though, so perhaps I misremember, perhaps it's been silently revised, or perhaps it's tucked away in a part of character generation that I haven't thought to search. If "Children of Matar" is correct I wonder whether it would be possible to use the construction in other ways -- the Sebiestor as Minmikramurka, for instance -- and what political weight that might carry (I expect that would make a political statement about Sebiestor identity as separate from the shared Matari identity).
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Topic: Idea on name origin of "Minmatar" (Read 9858 times)