Keeper of the Moon culture.

[Yrusama]

It's also possible that Keeper males don't get to decide who they breed with it all. The fact that they don't get their own unique name, really just their mother's name with a suffix on the given portion, makes me wonder if they have any power at all.

You make them sound like nothing more than a genetic dispenser.

[blackbluesky]

I wouldn't go that far, but living in a "highly matriarchal" society and having a name that equates to "So and so's second son"? There's got to be some power disparity going on there.

[Catapult]

I wouldn't go that far, but living in a "highly matriarchal" society and having a name that equates to "So and so's second son"? There's got to be some power disparity going on there.

Sad, but true. The gay boys would have it particularly tough.

[Felis]

No, we've been told the Seeker of the Sun migration was 26 tribes of seekers.
The Keeper of the Moon tribe may or may not have happened at the same time, but would have been a different migration group by the looks of it.

The Miqo'te traveled together as 1 race the sea.

During the Age of Endless Frost, as the seas turned to ice and passage over them became possible, Eorzea saw an influx of foreign fauna to her shores. This in turn brought the hunting tribes which subsisted upon them, the modern descendants of whom are today known as the Miqo’te.

Since then, the Miqo’te have diverged into two physically distinguishable groups — the diurnal Seekers of the Sun and the nocturnal Keepers of the Moon. Both groups share a superb olfactory sense and powerful leg musculature, results of a long evolution geared towards hunting and predation.

Comparatively few in number, they maintain an insular group mentality, tending to avoid contact with the other races. Many individuals lead isolated lifestyles, even when residing in the more populous cities.

[Naria]

The Miqo'te traveled together as 1 race the sea.

Just curious but with your following quote do you remember the official source? I remember reading the same when the game 1st came out, but that's not posted to the official site now and I can't remember if it was at the time or if it comes from the wikis.

Naming conventions seem to contradict them being one tribe during the Fifth Umbral era though; supposedly some Keeper families can date their names back to the First Astral (which of course may be legend and not actually true but it does imply that they have at least some reason to believe it), where as the Seekers have a very different surname system.

Cultures do change over time especially considering we are talking about millennia here so Keepers could have preserved older traditions even if the are the "newer" race. On the other hand a few millennia does seem like a short time for so many differences to develop physically between the two races. Maybe a wizard did it?

[Catapult]

The Miqo'te traveled together as 1 race the sea.

Just curious but with your following quote do you remember the official source? I remember reading the same when the game 1st came out, but that's not posted to the official site now and I can't remember if it was at the time or if it comes from the wikis.

Naming conventions seem to contradict them being one tribe during the Fifth Umbral era though; supposedly some Keeper families can date their names back to the First Astral (which of course may be legend and not actually true but it does imply that they have at least some reason to believe it), where as the Seekers have a very different surname system.

Cultures do change over time especially considering we are talking about millennia here so Keepers could have preserved older traditions even if the are the "newer" race. On the other hand a few millennia does seem like a short time for so many differences to develop physically between the two races. Maybe a wizard did it?

Hats off to you both. Not just for proving me incorrect, but because we also have a new conundrum.

This is why I love these forums. :P

[Soukyuu]

You make them sound like nothing more than a genetic dispenser.

to be honest that only sounds weird cause we're from a highly patriarchal culture. Males being a mere genetic dispenser is no different from females being breeding machines in our earlier ages.

[ZephyrFox]

This was in the other Miqo'te post but It brought up a few questions from me:

When the Seekers of the Sun came to Eorzea from their homelands, there were only 26 tribes. Since that time, there have been some males who, instead of defeating their tribe's nunh and becoming a breeding male by normal means, opt to leave the tribe and form their own. However, it is rare for female Seekers of the Sun to follow these males, so these newly formed tribes almost always die out.

This does not mean that it doesn't happen.
If a male leaves to form his own tribe, he will replace the letter from his original tribe (for example, the "Y" in Y'shtola) with a new one. Since the 26 letters of the Eorzean alphabet are already taken, the new tribal prefix will be often be two letters (Ma -> Ma'shtola) which are of the tribe-forming male's choosing (and all people in his tribe will use that same prefix).

His last name will be Nunh, as he is now the new breeding male (as designated by himself) of his new tribe.

While not impossible (people can do what they want with their names), a Seeker of the Sun choosing his mother's name to be his last, would amount to shunning his culture and adopting the rules of the Keepers of the Moon. There will be some Seekers of the Sun who will respect this, but others who frown upon it.

Hope that helps!!

So what about Seekers of the Moon? What happens when they shun their culture? Since they're solitary already would anyone actually care if one up and decided to abandon their miqo'te traditions and families? How would this affect males since the culture is matriarchal while we're at it? Would that be a serious offense? It's kind of unclear how the males fit into the grand scheme of their culture...

And since this seems to be an age of adventurers would there be cases where a traveling miqo'te up and abandons their old name altogether for a simpler name from another culture like Humes or would they just be too stubborn?

[NoloeTazier]

Hats off to you both. Not just for proving me incorrect, but because we also have a new conundrum.

This is why I love these forums. :P

See I knew I wasn't entirely crazy..think we're gonna need Gildrein or Ferne on this one. We're told the ancestors of the Miqo'te tribes came across the ice land bridges that formed during the Fifth Umbral Era, but for naming purposes we're then told that 26 Seekers of the Sun tribes were part of the exodus...so Keepers of the Moon branched off from these original 26 or were Keepers of the Moon merely left out of the description? As in they journeyed to Eorzea along with the Seekers of the Sun, we're just not given something descriptive as 26 tribes in the naming thread.

pickpickpicknitpicking

[blackbluesky]

I'm hoping that we'll be able to find clarity in the field eventually~