I was fishing near Costa Del Sol today, when Memphina rose from the depths (minus her trusty hound) and I started watching her cross the sky. Fast forward to the middle of the day when I look up and realise I have no idea if our star has a name.
So, Ferne, does our star have a name? Our solar system? Galaxy maybe? Entirely pointless, I know, but has any thought been put into our place in the universe?
Also I realise now I'm not 100% if the greater moon is called Memphina, but I'm pretty sure... I do miss Dalamud some nights.
Hydaelyn's Star
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12-07-2013, 12:52 PMLlenCoramHydaelyn's Star
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12-07-2013, 01:33 PMAnonymooseMenphinaQuote:
Originally Posted by LlenCoram
I'm not sure what secrets are stored away at SEHQ, but to get an answer to this question in Eorzea, you'd probably need to ask an Ascian. Even the word "planet" is uttered very few times in the game, mentioned only by Ascians, Sharlayans, and (bizarrely) the common guards that explain what Aetherytes do (the gates were built by Sharlayans, though, so maybe there was some imparting of knowledge on those related to the project).Quote:
Originally Posted by LlenCoram
In a quote from the distant reaches of the ancient past (2010), "Though it is the name of the entire planet, the term is very rarely used by its inhabitants, for to understand the concept of a planet, one must first know of other worlds, and most on Hydaelyn do not."
For this reason, I wouldn't get your hopes up about deeper astrophysical exploreation.
In Eorzea in particular, considering the Sixth Astral Era was an intellectual dark age compared to the age of the Allag (Third Astral), you won't be like to hear much of this talk. The moon isn't just named Menphina, it's oft thought to be a physical manifestation of The Lover herself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by E'qawhau
HOWEVER, even if Eorzeans might not know a name for the sun or moon aside from the names we give them relating to the Twelve, I can say this. Menphina is known as the Keeper of the Twin Moons, and we know that many consider the moon to be an incarnation of her. This would mean that, to Eorzeans, the sun would be an incarnation of Azeyma, who is our star's keeper.
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12-07-2013, 02:57 PMEnkidohWell, I'm liable to believe that there is at least some knowledge of cosmic mechanics in Eorzea - the Ishgardians particularly are shown to be tracking planetary and astronomical movements via telescopes, the old class-specific weapon for THMs was an astrolabe that featured tiny models of Hydaelyn with both Menphina and Dalamud clearly orbiting it, and the ACN class symbol is a celestial globe (a globe showing the movement of astronomical bodies), so even if the common man in the street might be ignorant of Hydaelyn's actual physical mass and how it moves through the cosmos, that ignorance definitely doesn't seem to be shared across the entire realm though. As Dalamud was clearly addressed as 'Menphina's loyal hound', that pretty much shows that to Eorzeans at least, the primary moon was called Menphina, after the goddess of the moon, and logic would therefore dictate the sun would accordingly be addressed as 'Azeyma' after the sun goddess (and my Enki's Guardian deity ;)).Quote:
Originally Posted by Anonymoose
And the kicker is the player themselves is shown a view of Hydaelyn from space in the opening scene upon clicking start for the first time. ;) That's actually quite common throughout the series even in FF worlds which are shown to be stuck in the dark ages relatively technologically, where that world is shown from space as a very earth-like planet, presumably to establish some sense of familiarity to the player.
Damnit, we really need the 'Eorzea Astronomical Society' to be revived (I thoroughly enjoyed that thread.). :D -
12-07-2013, 04:01 PMaxemtitanium
Eorzean knowledge of astronomy seems to be extremely primitive. I remember (and found it hilarious) that one of the in-universe theories about Dalamud in 1.0 was that it was physically growing in size, rather than simply getting closer. Eorzeans evidently don't understand the concept of gravity/orbits/satellites and assumed that stars in the sky are just twinkly dots embedded in the skybox.
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12-07-2013, 10:16 PMLlenCoramEch, I knew I made a mistake. Not the one I thought I was making though!Quote:
Originally Posted by Anonymoose
Thanks for the answers too. It was really only a flight of fancy while fishing (It's so boring nowadays -_-), so I didn't really expect anything to come of it. -
12-08-2013, 11:12 AMMaethusXion
Maybe Menphina was an Allagan? iirc they mentioned that it was the Allagans that put Dalamud up in the sky? Or they tried bringing it down, one or the other.
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12-08-2013, 02:52 PMKayokaneI wouldn't be surprised if the whole pantheon of The Twelve were really prominent Allagans. I do recall that the furthest back the symbols of the twelve go (that we Eorzeans know about) is on Allagan tomestones.Quote:
Originally Posted by MaethusXion
as for Hydaelyn's Star, Azeyma is described as being the Goddess of the Sun, so therefor I would agree with our resident Loremonger's theory -
12-09-2013, 03:22 AMArkghyom/n/-> [+nas, LAB]/_ [obstruent, +cont]Quote:
Originally Posted by Anonymoose
An anterior coronal nasal /n/ changes into a labial nasal [m] when it is followed by a continuous obstruent [f] (Alpha rule [labial feature/labialization]-> assimilation.)
In other words, the grammar fetish you have is justified by political constructs of standardization, but the linguistic output says otherwise. Memphina :3
http://idiom.ucsd.edu/~bakovic/grad-...hart_v1102.pdf
PS I was bored, my apologies. <3 -
12-09-2013, 06:26 AMAnonymooseThat's a lot of words I don't use very much, but does that say "Ns followed by Fs become Ms?"Quote:
Originally Posted by Arkghyom
I'm comfused by this imformation. It sounds umfit for universal emforcement. Simfully so. I comfess that I cannot comform to this comfinement whilst I have spoken otherwise since my imfancy. It'd be too paimful! TOO PAIMFUL. I CANNOT STRIDE FEARLESS INTO THAT IMFERNO. -
12-09-2013, 08:12 AMLlenCoramI think it's more that, when spoken, the two letters tend to morph into a letter between the two :P.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anonymoose
Let's call it Mn. -
12-10-2013, 01:29 PMAndaeron
Just to throw this out there, the "m" phenome is formed with lips closed, and you can sound "n" followed by "f" without ever closing the lips. Compare "confine" and "comfy."
Back on topic, Azeyma does seem the prime candidate, but in Ancient Greece, Apollo was the sun god, but the sun was actually Helios, who was, in turn, drawn by Phoebos across the sky. If Azeyma is specifically the KEEPER of the Sun, then it might be a separate entity. -
02-09-2014, 03:43 PMKyan
I'm sorry to necrobump this thread, but as I was just running past a FATE starting in Southern Thanalan, I noticed that the delightful U women were shouting before they attacked which reminded me of this topic.
The ladies said something along the lines of 'We worship the sun and will fight for Her name.' Okay, that's not the exact quote, I did take a screenshot of it, but what was of note are the two bolded words. They refer to the sun as "the sun" and also, with the personal pronoun which is capitalised "Her," imply its connection to the Goddess Azeyma.
Eorzeans may just refer to the sun as the sun. -
02-10-2014, 04:28 AMaxemtitanium
The star that Earth orbits around is technically called "Sol" but no one calls it that (except in Spanish). Maybe the star at the center of Hydaelyn's system is named Azeyma but everyone just refers to it as "the sun".
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02-13-2014, 03:12 AMMyrandaAs they commonly refer to Menphina as just "the moon", I'm sure they would just call it "the sun" in all casual conversation as you suggest. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever even seen either referred to by name in the game, it's all just been extrapolation from Dalamud being the hound of Menphina and the association of Menphina/Azeyma as moon/sun gods.Quote:
Originally Posted by axemtitanium
I will note though that, contrary to what sci-fi stories would have you believe, our own RL star's name is NOT actually Sol, it's officially just "The Sun" (capitalized). Nor is our moon Luna, its just "The Moon". Like your note about Spanish, these are just the Latin translations for the two, not official names for them. -
02-13-2014, 10:44 PMLlenCoram
I'm surprised this thread is still going. Here's another question then to you lot. Our celestial sphere seems static, showing the same stars every single night.
Has any bored person started coming up with constellations?
I'm probably a prime candidate to have done, given how much time I spend fishing at night, but the only thing I've noticed with any pattern is that one hot pink star that ends up over one of the distant lighthouses at Costa del Sol. -
02-13-2014, 10:50 PMMyranda
I had started such a project on constellations here (plus anything else astronomical, if anyone can think of it): http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...iety-of-Eorzea
That said, no results so far, though there are clearly more distinct stars that are brighter and colored that would make up the patterns. -
02-15-2014, 01:51 AMLlenCoramAhh, very cool! The stuff I miss slogging through GD. I should come here more often.Quote:
Originally Posted by Myranda
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02-16-2014, 08:32 PMMelitheaI know this is secondary to the thread topic, but I think you're overstating the disconnect here. Sol is not merely a Latin translation, it's the Latin name of the Sun. Sun is also a generalized word for a star, all of which have another distinct name. Likewise for moon. It's common to use Sol and Luna to distinguish our sun and moon from other ones in astronomy, not just in science-fiction, because these terms are not specific enough in popular usage. Doubly so in the context of space travel. Similarly, Solar System is ordinarily reserved for our star system to distinguish it from say, the Alpha Centauri system.Quote:
Originally Posted by Myranda
Although the International Astronomical Union says that the name of the Moon is the Moon, it also concedes that it has many names in various languages and then cites several languages that call it Luna (Latin, Spanish, Italian, Russian). All of these languages (and many more, including Klingon) also use Sol and Terra or an approximate derivative. Honestly it's a little weird that these should be singled out for names of Germanic origin while the rest of the planets, dwarf planets and moons all follow a different convention until you get to things that were only discovered very recently. Sort of a blend of the fact that English is accepted as the international language for professional astronomy, but wasn't the language of the first people to discover most of the other planets. Typically the discoverer gets naming rights, although the Roman Empire usurped these for the known objects of its time even including things that were already discovered.
I guess my point is, Sol and Luna WERE (one of) the (many) names before English even existed. If you want to be old fashioned or resist the dominance of English like me, you're not really wrong to use Sol or Luna, or even refer to the native inhabitants of our planet as Terrans. Most languages, especially older languages like Babylonian and Sumerian tended to name the sun and moon after their own gods, too. Azeyma is clearly the Eorzean personification of their sun, if not also the literal embodiment and namesake. If anything, calling it the sun would be a convention that exists primarily to distinguish between Azeyma the personification and Azeyma the star, as noted by the example cited of Eorzeans who worship Azeyma referring to the sun as 'she' rather than 'it', indicating that in some regions of Eorzea this separation is hazy at best. A better question may be, what do the people on different continents who don't worship The Twelve call it? -
02-18-2014, 10:19 AMRamira
Beware, the destroyers from the blue planet named Earth.
They will nuke your planet and steal your cat girls. -
02-20-2014, 04:54 AMRolandDebretonGadzooks, looking at the time stamp I have to wonder if you didn't spend the full three hours betwixt those messages penning that, but I sat at my computer and slow clapped after reading it....Quote:
Originally Posted by Anonymoose
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02-20-2014, 11:36 AMMyrandaA translation or the Latin name, call it what you will: it's still just a language thing. Sure, Sol and Luna can be considered valid names for them in those languages, where those are just the words for sun and moon, and would sound just as plain as "Sun" and "Moon" to speakers of those languages. What I'm really trying to say is it makes no sense to mix the languages, regardless of which one came first, and we more or less actually agree here. The IAU statement is indeed more of just "English is in general the international language of science," as you mentioned. For certain though, my original reason for writing that was to refute that Sol is somehow objectively more correct than The Sun in all circumstances, particularly in English where it certainly is not. It's all relative to the culture/language.Quote:
Originally Posted by Melithea
Needing them to distinguish against other objects is unnecessary though. For that we have the words "stars" and "satellites" or catalog designations like HD155322 if precision is needed like in a scientific journal, not to mention in most cases the context provides enough information there would never be confusion. The terms suns and moons only exist in general usage for other objects as a historical artifact once we advanced our knowledge to realize the stars were in fact the same kind of objects we already knew about as our Sun. But journals certainly never use Sol or Luna if written in English, that only occurs in sci-fi, poetry, and other arts. I never saw it in grad school, at least. Such usage would probably raise serious eyebrows in peer review/editing. (I will admit, I did think of one example where the word sol is used scientifically, non-capitalized, after the fact of writing this. It is used to describe the length of a day on other worlds, particularly for the rovers on Mars, to distinguish it from the 24hr days of Earth. In theory they could just use the phrase Martian day or similar for other planets, so I'm not sure of the history of how this usage came into common practice. I suspect it may have to do with reducing word/page count in articles to reduce publishing costs.)
Naming of other objects is a bit hairy, especially when you're going back to the ancient times of naked eye astronomy where pretty much every culture across the entire globe knew the same stuff about the stars at the same time but just had different names for them before an internationally agreed system was established and telescopes began to reveal new objects. All I'll say there is "history is written by the victors", and as such Latin/English terminology has generally prevailed, though many bright stars do retain their Arabic names.
Bringing it back to FFXIV, the bit about the physical Sun versus the personification is interesting though, and it raises the possibility that we may not be able to say the Moon and Sun are necessarily named Menphina and Azeyma. Egyptian mythology can be an example of this, where Aten meant the disk of the sun, which was just an aspect of the whole sungod, Ra. Of course, Egyptian beliefs and dieties shifted over time with the incorporation of Amun into Amun-Ra, etc so even that's not a clear cut example, but I think the point stands that the name doesn't have to be shared.
Asking what other continents on Hydaelyn call it I don't think helps that much, other than to bring us right back to the different languages argument. They may not even call the planet Hydaelyn for all we know, it's just a culture thing, and sheds no light on any sort of objective universal fact. It would still be interesting to learn of other FFXIV societies, though.