About the Sundrop Dance naming scheme

[Fenral]

I don't think it's an Echo goof (since people besides us can understand the Vanu), it's just a cultural difference.

If you reread my sentence and cut off "by our Echo" the rest still applies, and yes, it is a cultural difference.

[Khalithar]

Here's my crazy theory. The sea of clouds is a place where a single misstep could send you plummeting off the edge in to the clouds themselves. This could be especially dangerous at night, where visibility is much reduced and there all sorts of other creatures lurking about that could threaten the native Vanu. So the dance with it's precise motions and appearance of psyching oneself up, was done as the sun dropped below the horizon to signal the approach of nightfall. Thus the dance became a way for the Vanu to practice precise movement and psych themselves up before going out at night. Over the years however it became a dance that symbolized that courage and strength of the Vanu and began to suffuse other aspects of their lives until it became a central part of their culture.

[Cilia]

Well, I tried using the Sundrop Dance on the Vundu who come to stop you from stealing their food like I said I would...

... didn't work.

All the more reason to put them out of their misery! Shame on them for not respecting their cultural history!

[Rocl]

A dance to shake the heavens and drop the sun unto thine enemies! THE SUN DROP DANCE

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Now I wonder what the dance is called in the other languages...


And dropping the sun should be an actual attack.

[Yuyuka3]

Now I wonder what the dance is called in the other languages...


And dropping the sun should be an actual attack.

German: Sonnentanz (sun dance)
So, basically the same, just without the implication that you drop the sun on them.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

We should summon Aynonamoose in here!

[CyrilLucifer]

I think it's just a play on words and that it doesn't have anything to do with "dropping the sun." Sundrop, as contrast to moon drop, which is generally just a poetic way of saying moonlight. So you're dancing the dance of the sun.

If I was forced to theorize anything, they're not as directly based on Mayans and their sun worship as the Ixal are, but there may be some sun reverence there, since you have the ancestral "mother" and "father" in the quests. In many cultures, the father is typically the sun, the mother the moon. My most liberal interpretation of this is, since you need to earn the recognition of their ancestors in order to dance it, you may be doing something of an ancestral-channeling dance, in who best represents the ancestor-father (the Sun) is the most intimidating.

There's a lot of possible reasons for the naming, but I feel this is a case of the simplest explanation being the correct one.

[Serilda]

In Japanese it's 太陽の舞 I believe ('Dance of the Sun'). To be honest I'm pretty sure they adjusted the name purely to avoid the connotations of 'Sundance' in US English, since there's a risk of confusion with native American culture. The English name is cute so I like both.