Au Ra Naming Conventions

[allgivenover]

Raen female naming tip:

 

Try not to use the -ko ending for your character's name unless you absolutely must. Raen names are 16th-18th century, and -ko didn't come into common use before the 20th. In fact it was a MALE name ending before it switched genders.

 

Also, there will be a million -ko's, so consider not going for it.

 

Names ending in the following are a not-entirely-foolproof-but-good-thing-to-look-out-for:

 

-ri

-ne

-yo

-ya

[Asher]

Something just occurred to me. Should we assume that the t in "hotgo" is a hard t? or is it potentially silent?

[Kismet]

Along a similar strain to Qadan's inquiry, I'm not confident at all in my pronunciations of a majority of the Xaela tribe names... or Mongolian in general. Any tips or dummy guides for derps like me are highly welcome and appreciated!

[CallmeYahweh]

I found a few hints at their pronunciation while looking around for names. The best was from a travel guide website:

 

"Knowing how to pronounce the names of Mongolians you meet will help you make friends and get people's attention.

 

When saying any Mongolian word, pronounce the vowels harshly. The vowels sound more like English lower-case than capital letter equivalents. For example, the drink 'cola'is pronounced as 'collar'.

 

Pronounce names any other way and no one will understand."

 

Source

[Sin]

As a tidbit on its lonesome, yes, it does seem pretty lame -- but to me it's indicative of, say, the Chauchu of Russia (who also use sleds to transport their stuff during yearly moves), who are a very badass and tough lot.

:3

This. I think everyone saying that some of the tidbits are sort of out of left field should really think about the greater implication that the practice has on the clan. For example, I saw someone say that the one where they carry their elders on their back was small and uninteresting. What!? That's representative of huge reverence for elders and wisdom. That's super interesting. They probably have rituals and traditions to honor their elders and a million other things if you think about it.

Sadly, this would still be the case, the Devs stated that they werent changing lore regarding the gender ratio, in any civilisation if there are less of one gender than anothe genetically, group marriages happen to sustain population. Population and fertility is  amassive part of community. Empires fall without succession even in the lower classes.

 

I wish people would stop seeing that as a negative thing, it really isnt. You can be creative with it.

 

And I have been. I've seen other efforts too to bring a sense of diversity like the Xaela have to the Miqo'te tribes, but because the main thrust of the lore is sex-based, most people play it that way (partly because it is safe and partly because of other reasons), whereas with the Xaela, there is so much more to latch on to to deflect that -- and after 51 beautiful examples, an open license to "create anything." I would have loved even just a quarter of those 51 examples to have modeled possibilities back when our lore first emerged.

 

It's an old topic and I know I won't change opinions about it now. I couldn't in the advent of 2.0, and I don't expect to with 3.0. My focus now is on the beauty of the Xaela tribal lore, and the hope that these will serve to model to the remaining miqo'te the world of possibility open to them outside of mating practices.

 

Yes, yes. As I was reading these tribes I sort of felt vindicated in my choice to have my character's Ba' Miqo'te tribe have its own tribal gods, believes, customs, and traditions. I was reading Xaela tribes, and getting excited for them, but in the back of my mind I was saying... Yes! SE recognizes that different tribes will have different ways of going about things!

[Zhavi]

Here's some stuff, might have been linked elsewhere:

 

The Mongolist

 

Words pronounced on forvo - words are spelled with a Cyrillic alphabet, but it's interesting to hear the sound of the language.

 

More Mongolians speaking Mongolian

 

You can kind of get a sense for a pronunciation based off that. My guess? HO(t)ko, with the t being kind of an afterthought sound. But that's a very uneducated guess.

[orgil1993]

In addition to Zhavi's reply, there are some other sources about Mongolian culture and the language. 

 

There aren't many out there, but orgilproductions.com has a few cool stuff in there.