Why/How do wookies have names they can't pronounce?

Chewbacca, and any other wookiees we've seen, obviously don't speak english. But not only do they not speak english, you'd be hard-pressed to say that they speak at all. Just roars and barks and whimpers like a dog. No words at all. Han and Yoda seem to understand them, but I always assume that they understand wookiee the same way a dog owner understands his pet.
But regardless of how evolved the wookiee language is or isn't, I absolutely refuse to believe that Chewbacca is Capable of pronouncing the word 'Chewbacca'.

So my question is where does a wookiee's name come from? How does a wookie know what his name is, if his parents only growled and roared at him? How does Han know what Chewbacca's name is? Did he write it down for him when they met?


And, as a side note, can anyone think of any other examples of this?
We've seen Jabba the Hutt, despite speaking Huttese, pronounce words like 'Solo', 'Greedo', 'Jabba' and 'Chewbacca'.
And it's a little far stretched, but I think ewoks speak well enough that they could say 'Wicket' if they had to.
Jawas just make noise, but we've never been given much evidence that they actually have names.

 

My guess for Wokieeese pronunciation of chewbacca = rrrouuu-aunhah

 

Chewbacca (and other Wookiee names) could be bad transliterations of their real names in their native language.

(Gosh, I hate those Basic-speaking colonizers and their need to rename everything as they see fit! There's totally going to be a whole genre of reactionary literature that grows out of this in a few centuries!!1)

 

Sentience aside, we name animals according to words we can pronounce. I don't know anyone who has named their dog "woof woof"

 

True, but I think the point being made was more along the lines of: dogs don't name themselves names like Steve.

 

I had a cat who called himself Throckmorton. I only came to this realization after a bottle of Southern Comfort and half a bottle of Goldschlager, but it was an epiphany none the less.

Take the Vietnamese last name of Nguyen. Us round eye non-linguists will mispronounce it as "noogyen" or more commonly as "Win" which is still incorrect but passable, but still not close. I had a close friend in High School whose name was An Nguyen. It's fair to say that almost every person in the school massacred his name, but it was easier for him to deal with it then correct EVERY one. Probably same with the wooks?

 

I think you're all missing the bigger question which is "Why doesn't Chewie call Han by his first name?"

 

probably because he doesn't want to.

 

In the novel The Hutt Gambit, Han is unknowingly attacked by one of his smuggling buddies, and Chewie saves his life by growling "Hhhaaaaaaannnnn!" with great difficulty.

 

My view is that it is only our untrained ears that cannot distinguish the Wookiees' various growls, chortles, barks, whines, etc. as the distinct linguistic phonemes that they are. In other words, amidst all the "graa-unnh-rowrr" growl-salad noises, the Wookiees are articulating actual words.

Hence, "Chewbacca" is an English/Galactic Basic transliteration of the three phonemes that make up Chewie's Wookiee-language name, which might sound more like "Hoo-baa-kaa" when spoken by a Wookiee with the proper vocal apparatus.

 

^ Yes, very well said. Chewbacca himself could not have said it better.

 

^ Exactly.

I found this on the Wookiepedia: The unique design of the Wookiee throat made Shyriiwook a very difficult, even impossible language to speak for most non-Wookiees; presumably the word Shyriiwook itself, as well as other Wookiee words or names, were transliterations of the original Wookiee sounds into a form more easily pronounced by others.

Or it could be like the Chiss in Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy. They all have ridiculously long names - like Mitth'raw'nuruodo - but they provide humans with more pronounceable names with which to refer to them - such as Thrawn.

 

It's the closest human approximation. To properly say "Cthulhu", you have to be batrachian or ichthyic.