Miqo'te naming conventions for different Seeker tribes

Hello,

My question is this: if a child is born to a pair of Seekers (where both the mother and the father are Seekers of the Sun), does that child belong to the mother's tribe or the father's tribe if they are different? For instance, if the father is a member of the A tribe and the mother is a member of the Q tribe, which tribe would the child belong to?

Thanks!

-- T'lorna Zhiki

This is a tricky question with no answer given in the lore, because any child born to parents from two different tribes is inherently breaking Seeker cultural rules.

By traditional Seeker culture, a woman shouldn't be having children with anyone but the nunh of her tribe - and while they haven't explored it within the story, it sounds like anything else would be viewed as the equivalent of a married person having an affair.

So if your two characters are married (or just together) and keeping their original tribe prefixes, you're already well outside any naming conventions that are available for us to follow. Within the story they're probably having to make it up as they go along just as much as you are.

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Overall it's something I've already put thought into since I was playing with it for characters of my own - or rather I was playing with the naming conventions and the character idea sort of spun out of that, but in any case...

Between the naming conventions page and an old forum thread that gave some additional canon lore information (here and further down the page, or collated here), we know there are three ways a male Seeker can become nunh of a tribe, in order of social acceptability:

1. Take over an existing tribe by defeating the current nunh in battle

2. Claim new territory for his tribe and become nunh of the new area (also implying that there isn't necessarily a single "___ tribe" but that they may fragment over an area)

3. Declare independence and make up their own tribe with a new two-letter prefix.


In my case, I made them a fully independent tribe, so Z'aba Tia declared himself Zi'aba Nunh and then I'djalani "joined the tribe" and is now Zi'djalani. It's all within the rules (I think) and they're just a very small tribe that isn't accepting additional members. (The new prefix can be anything but joining the individual names seemed like a cute idea.)

Alternately I possibly could have gone the "claiming new territory" route and have Aba formally claim his apartment in Limsa as Z tribe territory... For all we know, that might be how less-traditional Seekers already get around the rules, though anyone from another tribe would still presumably have to transfer to the nunh's tribe. In any case I prefer the idea of them being a fully separate tribe, particularly when the rules aren't clear enough on how the two sub-tribes might interact.

Pretty sure it would depend on the dad.
If he's a 'tia vs a Nunh.
If he's a 'tia I imagine he takes the mothers name.
If he's a Nunh I'd bet he takes after the big shot Nunh at the center of the tribe.
Though, I have the Eorzea Encyclopedia and looking through it... it doesn't seem to have a hard answer for you.
It acts like each tribe and each race stays oddly segregated (like how there are no "half-elves" on Eorzea, or half dunesfolk).
Just go with whatever is most fun for you.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Pretty sure it would depend on the dad.
If he's a 'tia vs a Nunh.
If he's a 'tia I imagine he takes the mothers name.
If he's a Nunh I'd bet he takes after the big shot Nunh at the center of the tribe.

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You say that like it's no big deal.

Remember: a tia (no apostrophe) is by definition a non-breeding male. By their tribal rules they should inherently not be having kids - that much is clear.

What we don't know and can only speculate about are the cultural implications of breaking that taboo. It's inevitable that it happens sometimes - though clearly not that often or the whole tribe structure is going to fall apart pretty quickly. Most likely there's some kind of consequence if they get found out - the only question is how dark you want to get about it. Death? Exile? An expectation that they're now honour-bound to form their own tribe now? Do the couple elope before anyone can find out? Does the mother quietly pretend it's the nunh's child and hope nobody notes the resemblance to the real father?

Whatever the naming conventions are going to be in a situation, it's not just "take the mother's name" - we have that much from the link I posted earlier.

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Originally Posted by Fernehalwes

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.

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Looking at the NPCs, tia seem to hold on to their Mother Tribe Letter until they are attempting to become a nunh. Nunh (as well as nunh hopeful) seem to use the tribe letter of their (for lack of a better word) wives.
of course, the only nunh hopefuls we know are from the U or M tribes and they are both rather odd, lore breaking tribes. And we don't have ANY in game tribe that follows the lore we were given for them so idk. :l

The way I see it, children belong to the tribe. So they would carry their mother's Letter. If male, they would hold onto that letter as they go out into the world. Then when they find a tribe they want to join, and have the ok to idk trial? for the role of Nunh they drop their Mother Tribe, and adopt the new tribe. If they succeed, congrats they're tribe daddy. If they fail, they probably go back to roaming, using their Mother Tribe Letter.

I think the only way a child would take on their Father's Tribe letter is if they were being raised alone by their father (the tragic back story of at least 1 npc) or their father established an offshoot or double letter tribe.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

...Most likely there's some kind of consequence if they get found out - the only question is how dark you want to get about it. Death? Exile? An expectation that they're now honour-bound to form their own tribe now? Do the couple elope before anyone can find out? Does the mother quietly pretend it's the nunh's child and hope nobody notes the resemblance to the real father?

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Oooh I'm getting all sorts of ideas for characters now with "taboo" backgrounds. haha.
The exhausted and nearly incompetent nunh that it trying to establish a new tribe because he got shit faced at a festival.
The overly traditional mother who broke tribal law and is desperately trying to make sure no one notices how little her child resembles the Nunh. Time to play with Character creator again!

It does make me once again wonder how they keep track of Tia and Nunh though. I really wish we had a better idea of how the tribes were laid out and how big they're supposed to be. (Just how much inbreeding are we dealing with here?!)

I super want to visit a Normal tribe. with little miqittens running around, and a Nunh that is raising kids not leading.

I always got the impression based off of Seeker lore, that a Nunh normally doesn't keep his post for very long, a few years at most. Fighting challenges would take its toll and soon enough he would be defeated and knocked back down to Tia--if they survived. That would make more sense as far as preventing inbreeding at least. Neither of the tribes we have seen in depth really follow the lore closely but both have long serving Nunhs, so I could be wrong about that. That added with what seem to be more metropolitan tribes like the "Y" and the Seeker sibs from Moonfire Faire and I have to wonder how many Seeker tribes are actually traditional anymore.

I don't recall anything saying that the Nunh normally raise the children though? Just that they rarely become leaders. I would assume normally that their main occupation as a Nunh besides fathering children would be preparing to defeat challengers.

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Originally Posted by LathyrusLoon

of course, the only nunh hopefuls we know are from the U or M tribes and they are both rather odd, lore breaking tribes. And we don't have ANY in game tribe that follows the lore we were given for them so idk. :l

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Originally Posted by LathyrusLoon

I super want to visit a Normal tribe. with little miqittens running around, and a Nunh that is raising kids not leading.

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Originally Posted by Naria

Neither of the tribes we have seen in depth really follow the lore closely but both have long serving Nunhs, so I could be wrong about that.

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I'm not sure where the impression is coming from that the U and M tribes aren't traditional? They fit the description. Mostly women, one nunh, a few adherent tias waiting for their chance to take over. The only oddity is that the role of nunh is treated as equivalent or tied to being leader, instead of being appointed separately, but that's not a huge deviation from the overall setup.

And I'm not aware of any reason to think that the nunh's role involves raising kids just because he's the father (or "the tribe's breeding male who sired them" as the naming conventions put it, which suggests a much less personal connection). It's a completely different social structure - children are more likely raised by their mothers and aunts, while the nunh's job is to protect the tribe and defend both people and territory against outside threats. Maybe he takes an interest in the kids, maybe he doesn't.

A lot can potentially be extrapolated from information on lions' social structure - from the Wikipedia page:
- a lion pride is usually around 15 lions, can be up to 30, with adult females, a few males and their cubs
- males leave their maternal pride when they reach maturity, and may travel far to find new territory
- some lions are "nomads" and not part of a pride, but may settle in one later; lions in a pride may choose to leave and become nomads
- lions in a pride tend to have fixed roles: some females take a role raising cubs
- cubs are reared communally rather than specifically by their mother
- males "must defend their relationship with the pride from outside males who may attept to usurp them"

(We'll hope the bit about a new incoming male tending to kill any existing cubs doesn't hold true for what's considered acceptable in Seeker society... but you could certainly do something with it in a darker story. "Adolescents being forced out of the pride" too, for something less grim.)

There's also a bit on Asiatic lions that sounds like Keepers of the Moon: males are solitary or in small groups; females associate with other females and their cubs; male and female only come together to mate. That matches Keeper structure with a family unit of mother and children, possibly living in a group with a few other families, and the males keeping to themselves.

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Originally Posted by LathyrusLoon

The way I see it, children belong to the tribe. So they would carry their mother's Letter. If male, they would hold onto that letter as they go out into the world. Then when they find a tribe they want to join, and have the ok to idk trial? for the role of Nunh they drop their Mother Tribe, and adopt the new tribe. If they succeed, congrats they're tribe daddy. If they fail, they probably go back to roaming, using their Mother Tribe Letter.

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That's how I figure it works, though not sure if they have to go back to roaming or if they'd just keep on being adherent to their "adopted" tribe. I assume this is what's going on with the two tias in the U tribe.

We also see M'zhet formally request to "rejoin the M tribe as a tia" at the end of the M tribe quests. It's kind of messy since that's already his name prefix but I assume that might be the point at which a roaming tia joins the tribe and is welcomed by his new name.

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Originally Posted by LathyrusLoon

I think the only way a child would take on their Father's Tribe letter is if they were being raised alone by their father (the tragic back story of at least 1 npc) or their father established an offshoot or double letter tribe.

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Even in those cases, they're not taking on "their father's name" because their mother would be from the same tribe as their father.

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Originally Posted by LathyrusLoon

Oooh I'm getting all sorts of ideas for characters now with "taboo" backgrounds. haha.
The exhausted and nearly incompetent nunh that it trying to establish a new tribe because he got shit faced at a festival.
The overly traditional mother who broke tribal law and is desperately trying to make sure no one notices how little her child resembles the Nunh. Time to play with Character creator again!

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Yeah, it opens up all these completely different possibilities of how their relationships are structured and what they're even going to think of as normal.

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Originally Posted by LathyrusLoon

It does make me once again wonder how they keep track of Tia and Nunh though. I really wish we had a better idea of how the tribes were laid out and how big they're supposed to be. (Just how much inbreeding are we dealing with here?!)

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What needs to be kept track of? The tribe knows who their nunh is. Everyone else is a tia.

But yeah, I wish we had more understanding of how the tribes are arranged - though the rule that a tia can become a nunh by claiming new territory and becoming nunh of the area suggests that rather than a single "X tribe" you'd start with one in the very beginning, then one might split off and find new territory and that's also the X tribe but separate from the original. At some point you presumably run out of land to claim but who knows exactly how they manage it.

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Originally Posted by Naria

I always got the impression based off of Seeker lore, that a Nunh normally doesn't keep his post for very long, a few years at most. Fighting challenges would take its toll and soon enough he would be defeated and knocked back down to Tia--if they survived. That would make more sense as far as preventing inbreeding at least. Neither of the tribes we have seen in depth really follow the lore closely but both have long serving Nunhs, so I could be wrong about that. That added with what seem to be more metropolitan tribes like the "Y" and the Seeker sibs from Moonfire Faire and I have to wonder how many Seeker tribes are actually traditional anymore.

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I think the amount of time a nunh holds his post is going to vary - how many people want to take on this particular tribe? How strong is he compared to his challengers? An expert fighter could hold his position for years, while others squabble and switch leaders every few months where there are lots of challengers of similar strength.

The thing with "metropolitan tribes" is that just because they're not living in an isolated village doesn't mean they've abandoned their culture entirely. The Y tribe still seems to be following traditional structure - Y'shtola and Y'mhitra are half-sisters to the same father, and the lorebook tells us there are twelve sisters in the family.

As for the R tribe? We absolutely tied ourselves in a knot over trying to make sense of R'fhul Tia's comments, but ultimately we can't judge the state of the whole tribe on what could be some kind of exception to the rule. The tribe structure could still work in an urban setting - all in a shared house or as neighbours. Some might shift away and want to form a pair-relationship with someone outside the tribe, but that doesn't mean there isn't a core traditional tribe structure that remains in place.

(I think there's also the general problem that the person assigned to write a cute fluffy seasonal-quest story probably hasn't read the intricacies of Seeker lore and is just "we need an emotional sob story... and some cute kids. We have that child Miqo'te model, let's go with that.")

For reference, sidequests going into lore of the tribes:

[EDIT: I totally forgot we also have some bits from the J tribe around Ala Ghiri... not sure how much useful lore was in them but I'll have to check that later and add them in.]

M tribe sidequests:
Part 1: A New Contender
Part 2: Down But Not Out
Part 3: Make a Man Out of You
Part 4: Honoring Family
Fringes capstone quest:The Rose Blooms Twice
Ananta questline: It Can Be Cruel Sometimes

U tribe sidequests (first visit):
U'tykha Tia's quests: Part 1: Fetch the Freshman | Part 2: Mind Games
U'khuba Tia's quests: Part 1: Survey Says | Part 2: Tools of Office
Combined: U Don't Know Me

U tribe sidequests (Lv47):
Part 1: Can't Do It Without U*
Part 2: What's It to U
Part 3: U! Ow! That Stings
Part 4: True U

* It looks like there are old and new versions of this quest with the same script, one attached to Arenvald and one to Wigstan - it makes far more sense for Arenvald, and it's a shame that dialogue has been taken from him, but I'll guess it was changed when he needed to become a more active character for Stormblood so they didn't need to leave that particular quest-giving NPC in place. The last bit of script in Part 4 is also clearly Arenvald's.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

This is a tricky question with no answer given in the lore, because any child born to parents from two different tribes is inherently breaking Seeker cultural rules.

By traditional Seeker culture, a woman shouldn't be having children with anyone but the nunh of her tribe - and while they haven't explored it within the story, it sounds like anything else would be viewed as the equivalent of a married person having an affair.

So if your two characters are married (or just together) and keeping their original tribe prefixes, you're already well outside any naming conventions that are available for us to follow. Within the story they're probably having to make it up as they go along just as much as you are.

---

Overall it's something I've already put thought into since I was playing with it for characters of my own - or rather I was playing with the naming conventions and the character idea sort of spun out of that, but in any case...

Between the naming conventions page and an old forum thread that gave some additional canon lore information (here and further down the page, or collated here), we know there are three ways a male Seeker can become nunh of a tribe, in order of social acceptability:

1. Take over an existing tribe by defeating the current nunh in battle

2. Claim new territory for his tribe and become nunh of the new area (also implying that there isn't necessarily a single "___ tribe" but that they may fragment over an area)

3. Declare independence and make up their own tribe with a new two-letter prefix.


In my case, I made them a fully independent tribe, so Z'aba Tia declared himself Zi'aba Nunh and then I'djalani "joined the tribe" and is now Zi'djalani. It's all within the rules (I think) and they're just a very small tribe that isn't accepting additional members. (The new prefix can be anything but joining the individual names seemed like a cute idea.)

Alternately I possibly could have gone the "claiming new territory" route and have Aba formally claim his apartment in Limsa as Z tribe territory... For all we know, that might be how less-traditional Seekers already get around the rules, though anyone from another tribe would still presumably have to transfer to the nunh's tribe. In any case I prefer the idea of them being a fully separate tribe, particularly when the rules aren't clear enough on how the two sub-tribes might interact.

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I just have to say, the idea of a Tia declaring independence and making his own small tribe with just one female and "not accepting new members" is basically monogamous marriage and I find the idea of it very cute. And its perfectly within the rules for the clan, as you showed. Well done.