Male Viera names?

[MrThinker]

...not to mention the unnamed Keeper Miqo'kitten in Idyllshire who's usually waiting for her mommy and daddy to come back.

Checks post date. Checks again. Questions own sanity. Looks up NPC in question and then compares with character that was thought to be familiar.

...Was that Miqo'kitten not T'kebbe from Zhloe Aliapoh's Custom Deliveries questline? (Yes I know she's a Seeker, but she's the only Miqo'kitten who I've found in Idyllshire waiting for parents that will never come back.)

[Fenral]

Y'know, it might be. I might have been mixing her up with the one in Mor Dhona (who could also be a Seeker, I don't generally zoom in on catgirl eyes to check). Would it kill them to use the more Keeper-y skin tones once and a while rather than making everyone milky white?

In which case, yeah, they really don't like going into Keeper families at all (aside from the several million female Aliapohs).

[Iscah]

In which case, yeah, they really don't like going into Keeper families at all (aside from the several million female Aliapohs).

Keeper family structure is basically the same excuse-our-lack-of-male-character-models lore that the Viera now have: families consisting of a mother and children, living in settlements of a few family groups together, and the men keep to themselves most of the time.

[Fenral]

The most we get is a line that basically reads as "please excuse our lack of male Moonkeeper characters in ARR." Also, notably, delivered from the perspective of one very opinionated woman, keeping with Koji's overall philosophy that characters only express their own understanding of things. I do concede that it's not literally nothing.

Postmoogle quets: "The Past is a Story we Never Tell":

That man, the one who calls himself the king of the Coeurlclaws. King Poach, growing fat on stolen game, stolen family...

The men of the Keepers of the Moon live a wanderer's life, for they are at their best in small doses. Women and children keep the hearth, ply various trades, and accept game and visits from the menfolk.

But King Poach denies women this gods-given rule over matters of family. He forces women to live with him, forbids them to see their sisters, mothers, aunts. Most unnaturally, they lie with him and him alone!

Though I do appreciate the casual jab at monogamy.

[Iscah]

The most we get is a line that basically reads as "please excuse our lack of male Moonkeeper characters in ARR." Also, notably, delivered from the perspective of one very opinionated woman, keeping with Koji's overall philosophy that characters only express their own understanding of things. I do concede that it's not literally nothing.

There's also a bit in the lorebook page on Keepers (p.87):

In contrast to the Seekers of the Sun, with their male-dominated tribes and harems, the fundamental unit of Keeper of the Moon society is the family, centered around a strong mother figure and her children. Keepers are known to form small communities composed of two or three families who hunt together.

No mention of what the men are up to at all, so we have the quest script you quoted to infer the rest.

There's also the fact that female names are individual but male names are literally "Xth son of [mother's name]".

Though I do appreciate the casual jab at monogamy.

I just find it interesting to see different societies with different takes on fundamental concepts, and how they'd think about ours in return.

Preferably in ways that are curious rather than grim.

[Fenral]

There's also an interesting contradiction in the Seeker lore thanks to that same page. The Race Naming Conventions thread says they're matriarchal, but in-game text as recent as 5.3 (from Y'shtola, no less) and the Encyclopaedia itself indicate the opposite.

I just find it interesting to see different societies with different takes on fundamental concepts, and how they'd think about ours in return.

Preferably in ways that are curious rather than grim.

I do too, for the non-grim stuff. I mentioned it earlier, but the manga Kemono Jihen did an arc that exaggerated "predominantly female species" to the logical extreme, and let's just say it will haunt me for the rest of my life. (The animated adaptation glossed over it, a bit.) It's definitely diminished my ability to go "oh, yes, this would totally work," on some subjects.

[Iscah]

There's also an interesting contradiction in the Seeker lore thanks to that same page. The Race Naming Conventions thread says they're matriarchal, but in-game text as recent as 5.3 (from Y'shtola, no less) and the Encyclopaedia itself indicate the opposite.

I'm not sure what you're looking at, but everything I've seen (including the naming conventions) consistently contrasts Seekers as patriarchal/male-dominated and Keepers as matriarchal.

That said, logically the women probably have a lot of power if they want to exercise it. The men are ultimately fighting to prove who is most worthy of them, and they could potentially refuse to acknowledge a nunh who didn't fight fair to earn his place, or is just an unbearable person. It depends exactly what the cultural rules are on that, of course, and that may vary by tribe – even the main lore info (lorebook, naming conventions, quest scripts) is a bit wobbly on whether or not he's considered like a leader and automatically treated as an authority.

I've been meaning to assemble all those notes sometime. I think Y'shtola's explanation is somewhat off.

[Fenral]

This line, actually:

Nunh status does not equate to leadership within a tribe, and in fact, very few nunh ever become leaders.

"Matriarchal" was bad word choice on my part, but it does seem to indicate women are generally the leaders. The distinction between "breeding male" and "leader" isn't present in later texts, and the Encyclopaedia asserts they're the same:

The Seekers of the Sun are a highly patriarchal culture, with each tribe centered around a strong breeding male (nunh), whose duty it is to form a harem and lead his people to glory and prosperity.

Chronologically, the Naming Conventions posts are the "oldest," dating to the beta phase of ARR. Then 2.0 released and we got Forgotten Springs where that was clearly not the case, and then with Stormblood we got the Peering Stones, the Encyclopaedia, and most recently Alphi's euphemistic explanation delivered via Y'shtola. At some point the devs decided to just make them lions (minus the infanticide). Though with lions, it is also true that the females do most of the day-to-day work, so it may be an allusion to that.

[Iscah]

"Matriarchal" was bad word choice on my part, but it does seem to indicate women are generally the leaders.

It could easily be a tia in the leadership role too. I think I just assumed that. (Edit: Possibly because of the U tribe plot with the two tias trying to prove themselves the better potential leader.) Or you might have the nunh-and-leader stay on as leader despite losing the nunh position.

Though if that's the earliest "beta lore" then that explains why it's largely been replaced with the concept that they're not separate positions – the U tribe definitely seems to treat it as a single position, and the M tribe in practice, though M'rahz Nunh does still mention it's unusual for him to be both roles together. (But then he talks about passing on both roles together. To M'zhet Tia. If any situation calls for keeping the nunh out of the leadership role, I think that would be one of them.)

And yeah, the implications of Y'shtola's comments in 5.3 aren't quite right and she should probably be correcting Alphinaud rather than repeating it. Specifically there's no reason to not call G'raha "Tia" now even if he might have deserved another title while he was Exarch. (Being the only G tribe representative in the entire shard would possibly technically made him nunh by default if he fancied to take the title.) But he's not in that position any more and has no current claim to any territory, so that would put him back to being a tia by any definition.

[Fenral]

I honestly think that has more to do with the really weird thing where male Seekers are always identified by full names even though the "surname" is largely superfluous outside of immediate tribal dealings. It probably made more sense in the original Japanese thanks to their rigid adherence to honorifics. It's more relaxed lately thanks to Krile calling him "Raha" and core Scions lately dropping the "Tia" in dialogue, but I think that's Japanese familiarity rules at play again.

Also, you'd think they'd at least make sure Seekers won't call other Seekers "Mr. Tia," but it happens at least once per patch cycle.