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Author Topic: Idea on name origin of "Minmatar"  (Read 9859 times)

Louella Dougans

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Re: Idea on name origin of "Minmatar"
« Reply #15 on: 25 Aug 2011, 16:30 »

"Children of Matar" appears to have been used in blurb for the eve card game.

http://www.pixelpark.co.nz/content/ccg/eve-ccg.htm for example.

Malaetu Shakor uses the phrase "Sons and Daughters of Matar"

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=2245&tid=4

dunno if that means all that much though ?

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Matariki Rain

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Re: Idea on name origin of "Minmatar"
« Reply #16 on: 25 Aug 2011, 16:39 »

"Children of Matar" appears to have been used in blurb for the eve card game.

http://www.pixelpark.co.nz/content/ccg/eve-ccg.htm for example.

Malaetu Shakor uses the phrase "Sons and Daughters of Matar"

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=2245&tid=4

dunno if that means all that much though ?

Thank you. My mind was filled with the "Children of Matar" bit in the Fear the Tribes video, and with the various player references on the forum. I have a strong sense that "Children of Matar" either is or was used in the racial descriptions at chargen, which might be related to the card game description.

By the way, I'm generally pretty impressed at the work of whoever configured the initial name generator for EVE, especially for placenames. The sections I work with have a really nice mix of real-world linguistic roots and futuristic stuff. I'd most likely have moved things a bit further away from real-world sources if I'd been in charge -- especially given that there'd been the Long Night in between -- but I do appreciate the deft touches in what was presumably a list of protothemes and deuterothemes (first parts and second parts, which you can stick together to make names).

The original Amarrian language was Latin-based, though. Just saying. :) And it's possible that players are indeed shifting that now.
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Louella Dougans

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Re: Idea on name origin of "Minmatar"
« Reply #17 on: 25 Aug 2011, 17:07 »

shakor also uses the phrase "children of matar"

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=2816&tid=3

still unsure if that means Minmatar = Children of matar, but at least we know that it's a phrase that people use reasonably regularly.
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Matariki Rain

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Re: Idea on name origin of "Minmatar"
« Reply #18 on: 25 Aug 2011, 17:28 »

The following has no underpinning support, it's merely personal musing.

Given that we know the designers were at least looking at Maori graphic design for Brutor, and that when I originally read the Brutor racial description I got the sense that someone had Maori/Polynesian seafarers in mind, I've wondered whether the development progression might have gone something like:

Design board shows Maori stuff.
"So we've got our Maori types: what are we going to call them in the game? Maori... Ma'ori.... hmmm... is 'Matari' different enough for Legal to clear it?"
"That sounds like the name of people from somewhere called Matar."
"Okay, let's see what we can do with that..."

Again, merely a musing from a Kiwi.
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Mithfindel

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Re: Idea on name origin of "Minmatar"
« Reply #19 on: 26 Aug 2011, 12:58 »

I'm not one of the Old Ones, but as far as I am aware, "Matari" is player fiction that has stuck. You know, Yonis Ardishapur has said "Amarr victor" in a speech, so it's not impossible that player-created stuff ends up in the Prime Fiction.

On Amarrish: I think there is Word of God what Amarr is based on, but I can't find the quote. (IIRC Balkans-Middle East mix) A lot of early actor-stuff seems to use Latin. While those do have kind of an official okay, a lot of that is made by player volunteers and is not really compatible with a lot of PF. (In a source that is undeniably PF, Latinization appears in the names of the planets in Kor-Azor Prime.)
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Louella Dougans

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Re: Idea on name origin of "Minmatar"
« Reply #20 on: 28 Aug 2011, 00:56 »

San Matar means something different to Sanmatar.

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=2342&tid=4

I dunno, that kind of seems to suggest that Matar usually means "home", while -matar as a suffix can mean "person" or "people"

so Minmatar could mean "our people" or something like that, as well as "children of Home".

Matari could mean "homelanders" or "belonging to Matar". Maybe it's used in a way that's something like the difference between "I'm Minmatar" and "I'm Matari" is like "I'm a Scot" and "I'm Scottish" ?

Maybe like one of those languages where a word's meaning is greatly altered by the context ?
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