Wait...how is there a Coeurl miqo'te tribe if coeurls aren't Eorzean?

[Shadha]

Native to the jungles of the Near East, coeurls were only recently introduced to Eorzea, brought over from faraway lands such as Thavnair by Ul'dahn nobles who thought to breed them as pets. Now, but a handful of skilled tamers living in recluse on the Pearl are said to be able to train them.

In the mass exodus which occurred during the Fifth Umbral Era, 26 Seeker of the Sun tribes crossed the seas (which had frozen solid as a result of the Calamity) to Eorzea in search of food and warmer climates. The names of these tribes contained many sounds which were difficult to represent with the existing Eorzean alphabet; but the fact that there were the same exact number of tribes as letters in the Eorzean alphabet was taken as a sign that they were destined to make the new realm their home, and so assigned each tribe with a letter/sound that was closest to its name.

I'm at work so I don't have my lorebook in front of me, but coeurls are a "recent" addition to Eorzea, and the miqo'te migration was in the Fifth Umbral Era... The Fifth Astral Era that followed, when the War of the Magi took place, was 2500 years ago. So...???

I came across this while trying to puzzle out how the miqo'te confirmed to be living in the Near East might be named. I assume they'd have traditional names like all other miqo'te, but...

Help. :c

[DJMau]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Miqo'te were on the continent, migrated away then migrated back

[Shadha]

Yeah, the Allagans drove them off (yes, really! Poor cats), but coeurls still weren't around until well after all that...

[DJMau]

Any idea where they were originally from? If they're from othard then it's possible they found them there

[alimdia]

Othard is the far east, coeurls are from the near east.

Maybe the C tribe was originally near eastern, or maybe they first migrated to the near east, then moved to Eorzea, before leaving again for Meracydia when the rise of Allag drove them away.

Or maybe the coeurls were introduced to Meracydia before they came into Eorzea.

[Shadha]

When the Allagans drove the miqo'te away, they actually fled to Ilsabard, not back to Meracydia. They're originally from Meracydia, but the whole "crossing the frozen sea into Eorzea and finding the new alphabet" thing was from southern Ilsabard to northern Eorzea. Prior to the ice calamity freezing the seas, they couldn't get past the Gyr Abanian mountains.

So...yeah, I guess the only viable explanations are during their time away. It says coeurls are native to Near Eastern jungles, but it doesn't say whether or not coeurls were introduced to Ilsabard before the miqo'te returned to Eorzea. But I think it's more reasonable that the Seekers who would become the Coeurl tribe just lived in the Near East after their exodus from Eorzea, since there's apparently a population of miqo'te there. I'm not sure where she got the information, but Sounsyy says in her Thavnairian lore compilation that there are hyur, miqo'te, and "other" (probably roegadyn) there. (You do see a Thavnairian lalafell in Kugane...)

[FJerome]

Heraldry IRL had a lot of references to animals that the people at the time had only ever heard about in stories, especially when it came to big, impressive predators like lions and tigers. I can buy that a tribe of Miqo'te decided to name themselves after coeurl even sight-unseen.

[koichi88]

Do we know when the C tribe was founded? Seeker tribes can theoretically be founded at any time, so maybe the C tribe is one of the newer ones.

[Shadha]

Heraldry IRL had a lot of references to animals that the people at the time had only ever heard about in stories, especially when it came to big, impressive predators like lions and tigers. I can buy that a tribe of Miqo'te decided to name themselves after coeurl even sight-unseen.

True, but it's not just associating themselves with this fantastical foreign creature for a coat of arms, it's actually thinking of it as a spirit animal of sorts and making totems of it that were historically said to protect the tribe. I guess it's possible, I just feel like that kind of tribal culture would pick guardians they could see around them. Unless coeurl stories were really pervasive... Not a bad idea though.

Do we know when the C tribe was founded? Seeker tribes can theoretically be founded at any time, so maybe the C tribe is one of the newer ones.

It does mention that upon their return to the realm there were exactly twenty-six tribes, and that's why they took to the new Eorzean alphabet so readily. So C must've existed by that point, I guess.

[amifiq]

We can see a real life example in European coat of arms. Many of them are using lions but we all know lions' habitat is in Africa. Sometimes we see dragon and unicorn which aren't even real creatures. There must be stories about a coeurl, a vicious beast, fast and strong from another land which amuses the tribe