Saga A List of SW Names and Their Meanings

Tantive IV.
Saw Gerrera.

 

What a strange thing, an elephant riding a horse.

 

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/substantivus#Latin
sto/stare(stand) + sub(under) + ive(acting upon not merely knowing about)
By this means alone, one gets a ship, vessel, mission, cause of substance. Also, standing up under some expectation or weight. And also action, not merely the principle.

Also less essentially, tantus, Latin for so much size, so much, so great, as in tantamount.
By less essential means one gets 'make a great stand' / 'make a stand that is great' / 'stand up under something that is such and such great'.

I'm sure I am missing something next.
Sharp-edged tool in the era of war, answering specifically to 'extremist' as opposed to other customs of conflict as codified in Hague and Geneva conventions. Saw's -irregular- -jagged- forces make a path that regular forces (like the rebellion that abides by conventions of uniform in duty, clear responsible command structure, and other fixings) take up.

 

Tantive is from "tantivy," an English word for a horse running at a gallop. But it also draws on "tentative", which in medieval French as tentatif had not only its modern sens but also that of "temptation". So Tantive IV means both "the fourth horseman" (ie, Death, referring to Revelations) and "the fourth temptation", as in the fourth of the Temptations suffered by the martyred Archbishop Thomas a Becket in TS Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral. This is very much in keeping with the Catholic religious symbolism surrounding Leia in the first SW film.

As for Saw Guerrera, "guerrera" is from Spanish guerrero or "warrior", here used intriguingly in the feminine form. "Saw" refers to the traditional bladed instrument -- used by surgeons as well as carpenters, thus the Old West nickname "sawbones" for doctors -- but it can also be the past tense of English "to see". It may be related to "seeing the elephant," a US Civil War euphemism for a soldier's first exposure to real combat.

 

You should have said so earlier. I like the fourth horseman.

 

Small note on the TPM rough draft (in which Naboo is Utapau and Theed is Naboo City): at one point during the Trade Federation invasion, a battledroid reports that its troops are "marching on the city of Oxon." Oxon is from the Latin abbrevation of Oxoniensis, or the city of Oxford in England.

 

Nellith Skywalker, Luke's sister in the "long-form" SW saga: from two sources, both of which point up the contrast with the Catholic Madonna iconography surrounding Leia.

First, there's Lilith from Jewish folklore: Adam's first wife, preceding Eve. She was expelled from the Garden of Eden because she demanded equality with her husband, in sex as in other matters.

Second, Nell Gwyn, mistress of King Charles II of England. An orange-seller in a London theater (basically a concession-stand vendor), Nell became one of the many women who enjoyed the favors of "the Merry Monarch."

Once, when anti-Catholic sentiment in London was running high, a mob surrounded Nell Gwyn's carriage, mistaking its occupant for Charles' aristocratic Catholic mistress, Louise de Kérouaille. Nell famously quelled their anger by sticking her head out the carriage window and saying, "Good people, you are mistaken. I am the Protestant whore."

 

General Willard (commander of the Rebel Forces at the time of ANH)
seems to have been inspired by Oswald Garrison Villard, a founder of the (sic) "American Anti-Imperialist League" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Garrison_Villard

 

More like Willard Huyck - who, along with his wife Gloria Katz, polished the dialogue in the shooting script of SW 1977. They also wrote the screenplay for Temple of Doom.

 

I have to concur, in the January 1, 1976 draft the commander of the Rebel Forces was "Zan Dodonna", Willard (nowhere mentioned before) became commander of the Rebel Forces by the screenplay version of March 15, 1976.

An interesting coincidence, nevertheless, IMHO.

 

In the early drafts of TFA, Rey's name was Kira -- apparently Lucas' original name for the character. As Leia derives from Alia Atreides of Dune, Kira probably comes from Kryptonian refugee Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl.

It's a very Princess-y name: Jim Henson also used it for the albino Gelfling female in The Dark Crystal. Rey's own name alludes ironically to albinism, due to the Spanish conquistadores' legends about "el Rey Dorado" who covered himself in gold dust. But having her be albino in the current canon would probably make her genetic issues too obvious.

 

Of course, Maul gets cut in half, but turns up again with robot legs in The Clone Wars. Rather like this Dark Jedi who got cut in half in LucasArt's 1997 game Jedi Knight:



Maw/Maul; no legs/robot legs. An extraordinary coincidence, wouldn't you say?

 

yup. great game too.

 

Slave I, Boba Fett's ship: meant to be read as "slave, I" with the first-person pronoun rather than "Slave One." From the medieval Latin greeting servus, meaning literally "I am your servant". The I/1 pun comes from Dune Messiah, where the Bene Tleilax home planet Ix is considered to have a mysterious and baffling name: a result of galactic ignorance of old Roman numerals, since Ix is the ninth planet in its solar system.

 

8D8 and EV-9D9: from "eighty-eight" and "ninety-nine". These two droids' names reflect that they carry out the sort of graphic torture Lucas considered (but decided against) showing in Star Wars in 1977.

The first part of EV-9D9's name comes from the Biblical Eve, connecting her to the Christian imagery associated with Leia. Plus, EV-9D9 has a third eye: a motif recycled from 1975, when Lucas considered having Vader's torturers install a cranial dataport in Leia's head. (This is why one side of Leia's head is shaved in some Ralph McQuarrie thumbnail sketches.)

 

This is an awesome thread!

The origins of Sith in Celtic Sidhe have already been discussed, but there's also another aspect to it: the Old English word siþ (sith) means "journey". Long travels or wanderings were a recurring motif in Anglo-Saxon literature, usually related in symbolic terms to gaining experience of the world.

Cf. William Blake's Songs of Experience, which contrasts with Songs of Innocence. Innocence as a spiritual quality is in turn connected with Parsifal, the "holy fool" who heals the Fisher King and wins the Grail in the Arthurian mythos.

 

Bor Gullet in Rogue One is named for the phrase "bore gullet", as in "drill a hole in someone's throat". Which is what happens to Leia in several of George Lucas' 1970s outlines: a reflection of the faux-mute Yuki in The Hidden Fortress.

Interesting that the writers applied this name to a creature that looks like a giant tentacle monster.

(poor, poor Leia)

 

Not a SW name per se, but definitely in the Lucasfilm family: the two-headed Eborsisk in Willow is a variant on the traditional Basilisk, with "ebors" in place of "basil" in the mythological monster's name.

The name "Basil" comes from Greek basileus, "king." And "ebors" can be glossed as the Latin preposition e, "out of," plus the name of Sir Bors from Arthurian legend. A deleted scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade refers to Bors as "the ordinary man" among Thomas Malory's trio of Grail knights. (Thus the implicit reading: "out of the ordinary man, a king.")


Also, ren (as in the Knights of Ren) is the Chinese word for "human." It can also mean "humanity", in the sense of "benevolence" or "altruism".

Ren is one of the four key virtues in Confucianism; the sage Mencius wrote that anyone lacking these four virtues could not truly be considered human, but was rather an animal. Reminiscent of Gaius Helen Mohiam's infamous speech to Paul Atreides about animals and humans in Dune.

In this regard, I would suggest that "the Knights of Ren" is an ironic name, suggesting precisely the virtue Snoke's dark paladins lack.

 

can't believe i missed this one.

sebulba - Xibalba - Wikipedia

 

Shaak Ti: from Sanskrit "Shakti," the primordial cosmic energy of the universe in Hinduism and Shaktism. In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom you can hear Mola Ram chanting "Kali Ma Shakti de!" ("Mother Kali give me power!") before he plucks the heart from the chest of his victim.

Ki-Adi-Mundi: from "Ki", the Japenese rendering of the Chinese concept of qi, or vital force; "Adi," a Sanskrit word meaning "first"; and "Mundi," a form of the Latin word for "world." Taken together, "First Energy of the World."

 

"Adi" is also a Latin singular imperative for "approach" or "take possession". And could "ki" be a reference to Spanish "quien"?

 

Those connections are a bit too tortured. "Ki," "Adi," and "Mundi" are all common terms that regularly appear in the sorts of comparative religion and mythology texts which Lucas is known to use as fodder for this sort of material.