EVE Fiction

There may be some occurences where real-world words appear in CCP's random-generated names, but I'd call that a coincidence. There are purposefully picked names in there, too, but mostly, the generated names are look & feel only.

There are some sources on what comes from where. Too bad I can't remember where to find them. If I remember correctly, Amarr place names are a mix from the Balkans to the Middle East. Ardishapur, for example, is an example of a name with clear Persian influences. Some old sources also used Latin, including some old AURORA (CCP-supervised volunteer ingame actors) material. There is a fan project to construct Amarrad as an archaic Amarrian language. Amarrad shares a whole lot with Persian, I think. The Khanid have a somewhat heavy Mongolian influence, such as references to place names such as Samarkand. (Khanid on the whole are a bit of a mess, since Khanid bloodline is not the same thing as the Khanid Kingdom, and the royal family called Khanid are, in fact, ethnically True Amarr.)

The Caldari are a mix of Finnish and Japanese. A few fiction-related NPC names come from other things, too. Tibus Heth and his Templis Dragonaurs terrorists are obviously Gallentean, if we base judgment on the sound of their names. The most obvious mark is the Finnish diminuitive -nen in a whole lot of names. (Also, based on that in Finnish it appears on surnames, if modern "Caldarian" or "Caldanese" shares this trait, it appears that some Caldari write their names surname first.) There's also quite a bit of material on fan-created Napanii, which is within the internal fiction the original language of the Deteis. Napanii loans from Finnish and Japanese on sound & feel of words, can't really remember the grammar. The Achura appear to be very Japanese influenced, lots of Zen being thrown around.

Gallente names do indeed have a French feel. Old, removed-in-retcon material stated that the initial settlers of Gallente Prime were descendants of settlers from Tau Ceti, which got its initial settlers from France, Earth. Some people simplify this as "Gallente are French", and even some Prime Fiction material has a "monsieur" and "mon Dieu" here and there. That would hold mainly for Ethnic Gallente, of course. Intaki and their Rebirth beliefs (as well as some Intaki-specific decoration options in the old character creator) seem to hint that Intaki have a lot of Indian influence. Jin-Mei appear to be some kind of feudal Chinamen. And of the non-playable ethnicities in the Federation, there are some scribbles on the corner of a scetch in the art book that Mannar might have Hispanic traits.

There are also multiple Minmatar language projects, I think. A lot of the Minmatar ships loan from Norse mythology. The Art of EVE also mentions that Brutor Tribe art is based on the Maori. Can't remember much, I have never been very interested on the Minmatar. Vherokior might have Roma and Indoasian influences, can't really remember.

Yep, the Amarrad project borrows heavily from a vast array of languages, including Farsi/Persian. Let's see if I can recall some of the sources off the top of my head...

Romani, Arabic, Farsi, Ancient Persian, Coptic, Ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Greek, Latin, Zoroastrian terminology, Hittite, Aramaic, Babylonian fragments... and Czech, I think.

Could anyone elaborate on this a bit? Most names in EVE are randomly generated? I suppose from some set of syllables that an application combines and recombines? That would seem to make sense from some the NPC agent names. Would take a pretty creative imagination to come up with some of those unpronounceable things, no matter what your native language is....

Exactly what Horatius said. There are a few easter eggs in the system names, though (for example all CCP founders have a namesake system IIRC).

As a humorous example of random-generated coincidences, the crappiest agent in Home Guard, translated from Finnish into English, is named Poo Shankies.