The Miqo'tes lore

[radhaz]

Great work. I've read the sun/moon bit before, but in the context of this thread, the Miqo'te must have been divided well before the migration, no? Given the differences between sun/moon.
Of course, we are dealing with a game system, so science might be bent to the will of convenience. Like 2.5 mile wide tornadoes are the will of God.

[Catapult]

More extracts consolidated...

When the Seekers of the Sun came to Eorzea from their homelands, there were only 26 tribes. Since that time, there have been some males who, instead of defeating their tribe's nunh and becoming a breeding male by normal means, opt to leave the tribe and form their own. However, it is rare for female Seekers of the Sun to follow these males, so these newly formed tribes almost always die out.

This does not mean that it doesn't happen.
If a male leaves to form his own tribe, he will replace the letter from his original tribe (for example, the "Y" in Y'shtola) with a new one. Since the 26 letters of the Eorzean alphabet are already taken, the new tribal prefix will be often be two letters (Ma -> Ma'shtola) which are of the tribe-forming male's choosing (and all people in his tribe will use that same prefix).

His last name will be Nunh, as he is now the new breeding male (as designated by himself) of his new tribe.

While not impossible (people can do what they want with their names), a Seeker of the Sun choosing his mother's name to be his last, would amount to shunning his culture and adopting the rules of the Keepers of the Moon. There will be some Seekers of the Sun who will respect this, but others who frown upon it.

There are tia within the 26 existing tribes who, instead of defeating an existing nunh, prove their worth to the tribe by extending its hunting grounds. These tia will venture out into the world and claim territory of their own (by either finding somewhere unoccupied, or taking an area by force from another tribe). If they can maintain it for an extended period of time, then they become the nunh of that area, while still remaining a member of their original tribe.

This actually happens quite often. And is far more accepted than merely leaving the tribe to make one's own (which, ultimately makes that person an outcast). This is why you will almost never see Seekers of the Sun with tribal letters beyond the original 26 (like the Ma'shtola I mentioned earlier). There are simply not that many, and those that do exist, rarely admit it, for fear of ostracism.

There are many Keeper of the Moon family names that have been passed down through the generations.
The ones you see in-game (thank you for compiling that list aviha!) represent some of the more prominent families that once crossed the frozen seas into Eorzea in search for prey. That does not mean that these are all the names available. There are some families who have chosen to live more secluded lives, and simply have not made an appearance in-game yet. There are also the families who remained in their homeland, or emigrated to lands other than Eorzea.

The argument that the Keepers were an established culture before the migration holds water, although it is not clear if it was a part of the culture that the Sunseekers chose to relinquish on adopting Eorzea as home (suggesting the to-be keepers had a problem with that) of if there were two separate migratory waves, one of seeker and one of keeper.

As is indicated by the name, F'lhaminn is a member of the F (bear) Seeker of the Sun tribe. However, as many of you have pointed out, she has many physical features which are attributed to Keepers of the Moon (such as iris shape, skin color, etc). As many of you have also noticed, there have been other characters which have displayed the features of one clan, while following the naming conventions of another. This can be attributed to two factors.

One: It could merely be a genetic anomaly. Just because certain races have a tendency to display certain features (pointed ears, long legs, darker or lighter skin, soul-piercing eyes), doesn't mean that once every thousand or ten thousand births, something deviates from the rules.

Two: It could be that a parent or grandparent was of a different clan, and the features of that clan were passed down. We know for certain that F'lhaminn was raised as a Seeker of the Sun, but we would have to look further down her family tree for clues why she has the appearance of a Keeper of the Moon.

This confirms that Miqo'te can inter-breed, although it is not culturally common.

But then, how big is a [sunseeker tribe's] hunting ground?

Good question!

Big enough to sustain the 20-50 females (and the few odd tia) which will follow the nunh. If we're talking an area that only contains ground squirrels, it'll have to be pretty large...

[Yrusama]

Great work. I've read the sun/moon bit before, but in the context of this thread, the Miqo'te must have been divided well before the migration, no? Given the differences between sun/moon.
Of course, we are dealing with a game system, so science might be bent to the will of convenience. Like 2.5 mile wide tornadoes are the will of God.

The Sixth Umbral Era (1500 years ago) was that of water, preceded by the Fifth Umbral Era (that of ice), with probably several centuries in between as well. While humanity has seen significantly less racial divergence in more time than that, most of the races we know today have settled in relatively stable climates, removing the need to evolve. The Miqo'te, on the other hand, migrated across harsh landscape, and any subtle differences between tribes could have amplified into entirely different...um... breeds.

I'm not informed enough to know when humanity crossed into the Americas for the first time, but even among Native American tribes there are subtle differences, such as the presence/absence of facial hair.