Miqo'te Seekers of the Sun expanded naming conventions (unofficial) and tribe list

[MikkoAkure]

(The Mithra habit of hiding their males was adopted by Keepers.)

Keepers aren't hiding their males. Male Keepers of the Moon are wanderers and if anything, they're kicked out since a few mention how their presence is only acceptable in small doses and Keepers are raised without a father. A male Keeper having his own harem was even considered an abomination.

(I also wonder if the devs threw in the towel on the idea of the Miqo'te males being "rare" as they are so popular among players.)

Mystel in ShB and Hhetsarro in DT seem to have more even gender distribution than Miqo'te do but they're also separate from Miqo'te and it could just be an Eorzea/Ilsabard thing for all we know. The devs certainly could have decided to begin adding more male "Miqo'te" but since in both cases those aren't exactly Miqo'te, it's not exactly lore breaking either and they could just as easily invent a reason why Mystel and Hhetsarro are more normal.

As far as being popular among players, I don't think that really means much of anything when it comes to lore. And if anything, male Miqo'te are more likely to become adventurers as a percentage of their population since they're already wanderers to begin with. Similar with Au Ra, Hrothgar, and Viera who aren't native to Eorzea, so the only ones you'll ever see are adventurers.

[Turnintino]

As far as being popular among players, I don't think that really means much of anything when it comes to lore. And if anything, male Miqo'te are more likely to become adventurers as a percentage of their population since they're already wanderers to begin with. Similar with Au Ra, Hrothgar, and Viera who aren't native to Eorzea, so the only ones you'll ever see are adventurers.

And really, even if you wanted to count player characters, there's still a massive gender disparity lol.



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[Iscah]

This thread is magnificent.

Thanks! I'm working on covering all the races - so far I have also done Keeper/Mithra, Hrothgar and Thavnairian/FFXI Near Eastern (I need to update the FFXI list since I ended up going through all the FFXI NPC names and found more of them) and I'm currently overcomplicating the Elezen name list. Once that's done I think I need to get a proper hub post set up.

[Iscah]

Male Miqo'te npcs had been extremely rare up until ShB, and Alphinaud had a throwaway line wondering if G'raha controlling the Crystal Tower and ruling the Crystarium made him a Nuhn, despite having no children, as his role as leader and property owner(?) were valid qualifications.

I've talked about that in other discussions and need to include it here once I get to gathering the different lore-bits on nunhs, but in short I feel like the information given there doesn't match up with what we've been told elsewhere.

For reference, it's a conversation with Y'shtola after patch 5.3:

Y'SHTOLA
As you know, in Seeker of the Sun culture, the title tia indicates a male who does not preside over territory. In regards to this, Alphinaud came to me with a consultation.

The Crystarium may not be a territory in the traditional sense, he said, but our friend governed it with great leadership nonetheless. As such, would it not be inappropriate to call him "Tia"?

As it is by no means disrespectful to omit the title, I told Alphinaud that he is free to do so if he wishes. But I for one intend to call him by his full name. At least until he has decided what he wants for himself in his new life.

This jars with lore elsewhere, which would be fine if it was in fact Alphinaud asking the question from a mistaken outsider's perspective, but instead we're hearing it from Y'shtola, who should know better.

Firstly it implies that the primary qualification for being a nunh is the holding of territory and the tribe comes second, where elsewhere it seems that the tribe is the important thing for defining a nunh – and it seems to me that the actual holding of the territory is a whole-tribe job even if a strong nunh is going to be beneficial for that. But regardless of that question...

The official naming conventions lay out how a tia can gain – and lose – the title of nunh:

At any time in their lives, a tia can challenge the tribe nunh to battle. If the tia is victorious, he takes the nunh’s place as tribe breeding male (until he is challenged and defeated), and the nunh becomes a tia once again (if he survives the ordeal).

Earn the position, earn the title. Lose the position, lose the title.

G'raha is no longer Exarch. If you talk to him post-5.3 and before continuing the MSQ – right at the same time you can have the above conversation with Y'shtola – he outright states that he is no longer leader of a nation and he has left behind what power and authority he had in that role.

Therefore by the rules officially described to us, even if it might have been appropriate to consider him a nunh while he was Exarch, he no longer holds the position or the associated territory and thus would no longer have any claim to the title either.


As to whether it would have been appropriate to consider him a nunh? If he wanted to claim the title, he probably could. If it's about holding territory, he certainly has it, and could claim (if only to himself because nobody else would know what he's on about) that this is therefore G tribe territory he controls – Seeker population: 1 – and as such is the local nunh with no competition. If it's about the tribe, then again: G tribe offshoot, local tribe population 1, making him nunh.

But of course that would depend on him wanting to make the claim, and also involves emphasising his ongoing identity as G'raha [whatever title], Seeker of the Sun – and that entire identity is something that he has put aside and does not expect to take up again. It doesn't matter what rank you append to a name he doesn't use any more.

And now that he is using it once more, he's back in Eorzea where the standard tribe system is still in place and he has neither tribe nor territory, so no claim to being anything but a tia in his current situation.

[Turnintino]

This jars with lore elsewhere, which would be fine if it was in fact Alphinaud asking the question from a mistaken outsider's perspective, but instead we're hearing it from Y'shtola, who should know better.

This has always bugged me too (and in fact, I'm pretty sure we both griped about it on the subreddit at some point lol), but the only way I can rationalize this coming from Y'shtola (other than, you know... the writer simply forgot) is that she might just be an unreliable source, having been raised outside a traditional Seeker upbringing. That doesn't really align with her characterization otherwise, being our resident know-it-all, but the nunh definition is murky enough as it is that I just can't bring myself to take her pontification on the subject that seriously -- for my own sanity, if nothing else.

[RedLolly]

Thank you all for the clarifications!

It actually sounds like G'raha taking on the Tia title might be a subtle nod that he's letting go of the Exarch as an identity and as a role, and that's fine to me.

[Iscah]

Thank you all for the clarifications!

It actually sounds like G'raha taking on the Tia title might be a subtle nod that he's letting go of the Exarch as an identity and as a role, and that's fine to me.

Actually that's another part of Y'shtola's explanation that I think is somewhat misleading: the phrasing that "tia indicates a male who does not preside over territory" as if it's a title that gets assigned in specific circumstances, when really it's just the default state for anyone who is not currently a nunh. He isn't "taking on" that title; he simply is.

[Halivel]

This jars with lore elsewhere, which would be fine if it was in fact Alphinaud asking the question from a mistaken outsider's perspective, but instead we're hearing it from Y'shtola, who should know better.

This makes me wonder, do we know if Y'shtola was even still in contact with her tribe (other than her sister) once Matoya took her under her tutelage? What are the chances that Y'shtola is not actually all that familiar with tribal customs due to being removed from them since early age?

[MikkoAkure]

This makes me wonder, do we know if Y'shtola was even still in contact with her tribe (other than her sister) once Matoya took her under her tutelage? What are the chances that Y'shtola is not actually all that familiar with tribal customs due to being removed from them since early age?

We don’t know if Miqo’te in Sharlayan even practice tribal customs. We know her and her sister share the same father and have different mothers but that’s about it. Miqo’te in other cities like Limsa Lominsa also seem to eschew that kind of life and speak of nuclear families with a single mother and father. On top of that, Sharlayan seems to be more cosmopolitan than practically anywhere else and ignores race to the point they don’t count it in their census.

[LeCorbeaux]

A small note for E'bandala I found while compiling my own information: Her father's name (Dajha) seems to only exist in the English version. In particular, the Japanese one uses either "香しのエ・バンダラ" ("Fragrant E'Bandala") for the NPC or "ワインポートの醸造家：エ・バンダラ" ("Wineport Winemaker: E'Bandala") for the leve client. Same for German ("E'bandala Süßmähne" and "Winzer E'bandala vom Weinhafen"), French ("E'bandala fragrante-chevelure" and "E'bandala, caviste de Port-aux-Vins") and Korean ("향기로운 에반달라," and "포도주 항구 양조기술자: 에반다라").