Names After an Eternal Bond Between Sun and Moon Miqo'te

[Vidu]

Still, a quick Wikipedia search suggests that medieval European population (probably the best analogue) is still counted in millions, and the biggest Miqo'te count of a few thousand sounds rather low.... but then again if it's a very stable small population, perhaps that's enough?

It shouldnt be enough - if this would be the case, only one tribe per letter and tribe-sizes ranging from anything between 11 (one nunh + minimal amount of females) to something around 200 (3 nunhs + 50 girls for each + younglings, Tias etc.), we would have lost tribes by now.
I'll bring up a point I mentioned earlier: One of the greatest concerns we're having with endagered species in the real world is that once their population gets really low and is confind to only one spot (like an island, a very specific mountain, whatever - basically that animal only lives in this one tiny place) they're under constant threat to get wiped out rather easly. One storm, one bushfire, one illness, maybe even one predator would be enough to wipe out an entire species. And without another population of that species elsewhere in the world, that animal is gone forever.

Now, Miqo'te arent animals of course, but there are still lots of scenarios that could easly wipe out smaller tribes, like an illness. Think of the black death in europe - or of the Tonberries of Nym, to stick to the game!
Having tribes with such low population, while also still rather living in the wild, being hunters and adventurers does seem dangerously low.

It opens up two scenarios though:
(1) The one I proposed already - several branch-tribes per letter. You'd always have a "back up" tribe, so to speak.
(2) Once a tribe is wiped out, that letter would become free, right? So any Tia could go, gather some girls and claim to be the new G-tribe, after all of its members died.

I have to say that I like my explantion better, though...

And I get that population scale is difficult when it comes to a video game, so I'm not running around in Ul'dah counting the people and going like "Well, 20 people is pretty low as population for a city that I should believe is one of the biggest and richest in this world!" because I can easly convince myself that there are thousands of people I'm just not seeing. They're limited by the enging (and of course, our favorite: The limites of the playstation).
When it comes to the Seekers though, they've limited themselves by lore. If you do the math, according to that lore, you end up with only a few thousand Seekers tops.
...it just doesnt add up if we only assume 26 tribes with 10-200 people in each!

[Eloah]

.Where are you getting this phrasing from? I checked the naming conventions, which say it's "the first name of the tribe’s breeding male who sired her", and the lorebook, which says it's a "patronymic taken from the breeding male". Nothing about families that I would consider a "specific mention".

You can infer it from the statement in the naming conventions that "males do not take family names, as they are each considered the 'origins' of new families", but then females don't really take family names either, except a short-term tracking of a single generation.

You are correct in that it's an inference based on what has been said. We know that the Seeker higherarcy mimics human society to a degree and large feline societies, mostly lions, from my knowledge. The females are always part of the harem, but children depend on their father. If a new leader comes in any children from the old leader, specifically males aren't considered "family", and might be killed or chased out; females may be absorbed into the harem though. Granted Miqo'tes are a bit more civalizes, but the system is similar based on what we've been told.

.If a new nunh takes over the tribe, there are still going to be family bonds from the old nunh, and it becomes even more of a tangled family web, but there's no real split between family members with different patronymics.

For how this would play out...

Say we have two women from a tribe, X'amneko and X'brohka. They both have a child with X'aba Nunh. Then a new nunh X'bhen takes over and they both have another child.

So now we have:
X'amneko and her daughters X'delika Aba and X'ebaloh Bhen
X'brohka and her daughters X'ghonako Aba and X'hahtoa Bhen

Each girl has two half-sisters in different directions, and their surnames don't really define "families within the tribe" because it's more like an interlocking grid. The names just track which nunh was their father. (Unless of course they only count the nunh-and-children as "a family" and the mothers aren't really considered part of a family unit.)

Meanwhile they all have the X tribe indicator that marks them as part of this complex family relationship that is spread across the entire X tribe. That's why I consider it to be the "family name", or equal to it.

You are exactly right, it's who their father is that denotes their "main" familiar connection. And in fact, this is no different than what we humans do; though in our case it's usually the mother. Many women have a child with one man, then for whatever reason, have another child with another man. Now this doesn't mean that neither child isn't a member of their father's family, but since our society favors mothers, each child is going to be considered part of the mother's family first and formost. That basically what it is here. The father is their main family. But as you said the way it works it does become a woven web of interconnected families, cause well cats, lol.

Also I may have just spent an hour trawling through the character database to compile a list of Sunseeker NPC names so I could give accurate examples. Please send help. :/

There is no help for people like us....

Help me

[Iscah]

You are exactly right, it's who their father is that denotes their "main" familiar connection.

I think you're making assumptions here - I don't think it's something the game has stated. And one of the possibilities in the other discussion was that R'fhul Tia and R'mahja being a family unit with their mother and the nunh not necessarily counting as a "father", and nobody countered that at the time with "the nunh is considered the primary parent" so I don't think it's common knowledge/fanon.


(My own take, until we get further canon information, would be that the entire tribe would be their main family connection, and they might identify with that more than an individual family.)

[Eloah]

It's inference, so I wont say anything more really. It is what we believe it is based on the amount of information gathered.

Though I will say maybe we can classify it as nuclear and extended family.