>And there's something about her name...

A couple of quick notes on Tali's name:

Shukra, her clan name, is the Sanskrit for "pure" or "clear" (or "brightness" or "clarity" if used as a noun). It's also the Vedic name for the planet Venus or the god thereof (I'm not real clear on Vedic things in general), which has astrological significance as a benificent influence, which is how I came across it; I was looking around for foreign-language names of the planets and that one caught my eye.

Kythera, the name of the ship she comes from, is one of the Ionian Islands of Greece, which were in ancient times the wellspring of what we now think of as the Western way of thought and the scientific method (per James Burke's The Day the Universe Changed and Carl Sagan's Cosmos). A short distance away is another island, Antikythera; if that name is familiar to you, you've probably heard the story of the Antikythera Mechanism, a mechanical astronomical computer discovered some years ago in a shipwreck there. This fiendishly complicated little device was something like a thousand years ahead of its time, assuming archaeologists have dated it correctly.

See, I don't just make this stuff up without thinking about it a little first. Sometimes. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.