Question regarding the map of Eorzea

[Anonymoose]

I went through that exact same process, lol.

[Rocl]

Did you also fall to your knees and scream FERNEHALWES to the heavens?

Or was that just me

[Anonymoose]

I said something about it in one of our Lore threads (forget which one) just in case Fernehalwes was supposed to report in to the Lore department that Anonymoose did, indeed, try to translate Dalamud, and did, indeed, just tell everyone that it was only the alphabet, thus ruining the immersion of loremongers everywhere and winning our favorite ahriman a bet.

[NoloeTazier]

Can anybody read the name under the ships? I'm chipping away at it now, but most of the "handwritten" Eorzean is quite difficult to get right. Even the six letters above EORZEA on the sigil are giving me grief (though, to be fair, they might not actually say anything considering the sixth letter is a backwards u).

All three ships are marked with the same five-letter word, which I'm pretty confident begins with a J.

EDIT:
The longer I stare at this, the higher I assess the likelihood that any text smaller than The Cieldalaes is deliberate gibberish.

Yeah I noticed the gibberish too as I looked closer, it's almost like a grocery list. After zooming in and knocking my brain around I came up with these for words/letters for the boats:

Jaks_
Jans_

The letters are so jumbled it's hard to tell what the last 3 are.

[Skies]

Uhn... Smaller flags, fist row, sixth from the left.
I am almost 100% sure, like 78% sure actually, that that's the same banner up in Little Ala'Mhigo. They do have a purple banner, gotta watch with more care

[Myranda]

There may be something in the flags, and without any further evidence I'd probably sign on to the theory that they're hamlets/villages.

As for the smallest text on the map, I'm 100% convinced it's deliberate gibberish. In the bottom right of the full map there is box with similarly sized text that is barely legible but still clearly Eorzean. If they could make that text recognizable, certainly they could have for the other map labels but they intentionally did not.

[Catapult]

I have the fabric version of the map at home - the one that came with the collector's edition. I'll try and take a peek at it this evening to see if it can give a better resolution.

[StianGold]

Its linkshell marks! The Blue and white. Maybe that is why its so familiar to you? I once saw a thread on the fourums with the Eorzean Alpahebth but i cant find it now.. God i should start making bookmarks.

If you look at the ships sailing into Limsa Lominsa, they bear the blue and white flag. Why is it so familiar to me...

We also see a small red rectangle off the western coast of Thanalan and to the south of Sharlayan, and a small yellow/orange one off the coast of Mazlaya (off the west coast of Thanalan), which could be two of the flags in this smaller box.

I believe the red flag with the white mark in the center may be Sharlayan, as we see the red rectangle next to where text-descriptions in game place the city and a ship sailing away from this location bears the same flag on its mast...

Looks like I'm getting to work!

[Starts a new wiki page and puts on his translating hat.]

[Catapult]

Incidentally, no, not even the fabric map tells me anything. It seems the artwork itself is designed to make the text illegible rather than it being a resolution issue.

[Addicted]

Its linkshell marks! The Blue and white. Maybe that is why its so familiar to you? I once saw a thread on the fourums with the Eorzean Alpahebth but i cant find it now.. God i should start making bookmarks.

That gives me an idea, especially since the symbols in question are associated with ships. Perhaps they're related with trade routes or merchant organizations? It's a bit odd they'd be below the 4 city state flags but it's something to ponder. I don't really recall if the named merchant organizations in Ul'dah and Limsa Lominsa had crests or the like.