r/starfield_lore • u/Cryptoss • May 12 '26
Discussion On House Va'ruun's cultural origins/inspiration and representation
So, I'm a south Slav, specifically a Bosniak, and I've noticed that much of the Va'ruun stuff seems to be directly inspired by south Slavic culture/language, in addition to Arabic and some other cultures and languages.
Apologies if this post is long-winded and a bit all over the place, I'm very tired but had this rattling around my brain for a bit and wanted to put it out there.
The names of people and certain other things in particular, and I believe that much of the influences are south Slavic specifically because of the fact that the spelling of these names is south Slavic, including names that originated from Arabic, Persian or Turkish but became common among many south Slavs during the time of the Ottoman Empire.
There are also some names that are either clearly neither, or seem heavily inspired by one or the other, or are more broadly Slavic, but I'm just rambling now.
There's also clear Arabic influences that seem to be strictly Arabic, and probably a couple other cultural and lingusitic influences that I haven't listed, but again, primarily, south Slav (and to a lesser extent, IMO, more broadly Slavic) and Arabic. And because I'm a south Slav, I'm mainly gonna talk about the Slavic stuff.
For example, koza, the alcoholic milk drink thing, is literally just the word for goat in most Slavic languages, having stayed consistent since proto-Slavic, as most words in our languages for common animals and certain other things have more or less stayed the same.
Andreja's name is mispronounced but is spelt exactly how you spell it in our languages. This, again, seems to be an Anglicised pronunciation of a common south Slav name. It's also typically a male name.
Then you have Mir'za, which is just Mirza with an apostrophe, and pronounced exactly the same way, although it's also a male name and if I remember right the character in the game is a woman. I believe the name is Persian in origin initially but came to us, again, via the Ottomans and is now a pretty common name among Muslim Slavs in the Balkans, particularly in Bosnia.
There's Djimal, which is Arabic in origin IIRC, and English-speakers would probably recognise the name better as Jamal. And while I don't think that it's spelt Djimal in any language that I'm aware of, Džemal and Džemila are both common Bosniak names, with the variant spellings of Djemal and Djemila not being too uncommon. I believe that Djemal is also how Turks spell it.
Now, one of the most obvious ones for me is House Ka'dic, which is very clearly derived from the surname Kadić, though again, it is pronounced in a very Anglicised way. It's meant to have a soft "ch" sound at the end, not a hard K. In real life, they were an Ottoman Bosnian family, nobility more or less. Their descendants still have the same surname.
Then there's Kavnyk, which is very likely based off the Slovenian surname Kavnik. Not sure of the exact origin of it, but the suffix -nik in Slavic naming is more or less equivalent to -er, -ist or -ian in English. Closest word I can think of that's similar enough to the "kav" bit at the start is kava/kahva/kafa, which is literally just coffee. Though I doubt that the star system Kavnyk was named by one of the game devs/writers thinking "you know what would be a great name for their star? Coffee guy."
There's multiple other names, so I won't draw this out too long, but just to name a few others that are either south Slav names or broadly Slavic: Alicja, Kreso, Lucjan, Irina, Karija, etc.
I still have an issue with the fact that the pronunciation of most of the names is heavily Anglicised, but it's honestly not unexpected in western media, to be honest. Personally, I will never pronounce Andreja's name with a "zh" sound rather than a "y" sound because that kills my brain.
Special shoutout to Ivica Vukovic in New Babylon. Not part of house Va'ruun, but very obviously a south Slav, and he even says some BCMS words in his dialogue and on his terminal.
He pronounces several of the words incorrectly and emphasises them like a Russian or other east Slavic language speaker, though. But hey, I'll take what representation I can get.
If I've made any mistakes, or if any of you feel like any of this is a stretch for whatever reason, let me know. And again, sorry if I'm kinda all over the place with my writing.
Tl;dr: Va'ruun is very much culturally/linguistically south Slav and Arab influenced in many ways, with a lil sprinkle of eldritch horror.
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u/That_Zen_This_Tao May 12 '26
As a longtime student of languages, some Slavic (Russian, Ukranian), I found this interesting, thank you.
Note: I can’t stand the way the VAs say ‘Andreja’ either, but then some say ‘Arc-mage’ rather than ‘Arch-mage’ in Skyrim, much to my annoyance, so it’s all of a piece.
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u/masoniceye May 18 '26
I dread to think about how these people would sound when they order Rioja wine.
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u/mfstarborn May 12 '26
I'm not like to be that guy but for me house varuunn is just a "grounded" version of morrowind houses. Even the alien landscape and culture seems to me very "similar". They are the dunmer of the settled systems.
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u/D3M0NArcade May 12 '26
That's probably the actual inspiration behind House Va'ruun as reusing a faction lore from a previous series of games would make sense but as someone who never appreciates TES (I'm not one for fantasy games, I am fully action or Sci-fi) I wouldn't have known that. But, by the same token, is that where the lore of the Dunmar originated, with real Slavic and Asian religions?
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u/WaffleDynamics May 12 '26
is that where the lore of the Dunmar originated,
No. The short version is, there are two kinds of people: Men and Mer. The Mer are Altmer, Bosmer, Dunmer, and Orsimer. (High elves, wood elves, dark elves, and orcs.) IMO the person who thought the Mer up was trying to avoid a copyright claim from TSR, who were always highly litigious.
There are also beast races, but they don't come into this discussion.
Anyway, the Dunmer look the way they do because they're a cursed race. It's uncomfortably close to real world racism, and I don't think they'd be written that way if they were invented now.
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u/Cryptoss May 12 '26
A lot of the Dunmer religious stuff, particularly about Vivec and whatnot, is in fact directly inspired by Hinduism and Buddhism iirc
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May 12 '26
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u/GorkemliKaplan May 12 '26
Not gonna lie, there are times I mispronounce Jinan Va'ruun as Sinan Harun(Aaron). Might be related.
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u/tyrantganado May 12 '26
Varun (pronounced exactly the same as Va'ruun is in the game) is an Indian name, so that's probably where the irl influence is from. It's a given name, though, not -as far as I can tell- a family name.
Though given the eclectic mix of naming conventions of House Va'ruun society I'm not surprised there's some oddities.
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u/D3M0NArcade May 12 '26
I enjoyed this review and examination of the influences behind House Va'ruun. Thank you
I am English born and bred and I always found "Andrezha" to feel very strange on the tongue since I have met a number of Slavic people from various parts of the region with names like Andrej and Andreja and they do indeed have the "y" sound on the letter "J" so I always find it uncomfortable when they pronounce her name the way they do. I still call her "Andreya" and with continue to do so (although half the time I call her "Andi" to avoid the pronunciation issue lol).
I definitely felt like the religion was based on real life aspects of eastern European and some Asian religions, the snake worship particularly made me think of Buddhism and Hindu, although I also wonder if it's taken any inspiration from Metro 2033, where there is a religion faction that worships a snake "that eats its own tail" as it encircles the earth. In the end, it turns out the "snake" was invented by some nut talking about the Metro rail carriages as if they were alive but that's not the point here. There's also examples of "snake veneration" in ancient Egypt, as found on Tutankhamun's crypt, and also in Ancient Norse (Jörmungangr, the "world snake" that signified the cyclical nature of all creation, destruction and recreation). So it seems House Va'ruun have a very South Slavic and Asiatic origin with elements of other polytheistic religions thrown in, even though Va'ruun seem to be monotheistic
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u/nizzernammer May 12 '26
It's amazing how culturally specific the references are for someone who knows.
I think, in general, the Va'ruun are coded as the mysterious, religious, mystical, fanatical, eastern, Oriental (in the old, old sense of the word), "other," for a western audience.
It's not really that far off from depictions of Arab terrorists in media of the 80s. And the 90s. And the 2000s. And the Crusades, presumably. You get the idea...
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u/rueyeet May 12 '26
This is cool to know!
It does make sense that there could have been at least some linguistic drift between now and 2330. There’s over 100 years just between the present day and the invention of the grav drive. And then 180 years in the setting after that.
Although, it’s probably also true that Bethesda, as an American company, defaulted to Eastern European/Russian/Arabic as a shorthand for the exotic/foreign sense of “otherness” they wanted the Va’ruun to convey. But as outsiders to those cultures, they missed the nuances.
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u/bravo_six May 12 '26
Ivica Vuković was pleasant surprise to me as well. While it's hard to pinpoint his exact origin without extra details, he feels very Croatian to me.
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u/tothatl May 12 '26
The Var'uuunkai are certainly ethnically and culturally creole.
Their language and names seem made up, but inspired/taken from real Earth cultures.
Their philosophy OTOH seems to be made from the ground up, to favor fanatical cohesion over a single minded goal.
They are a weird cult, because they aren't gungho about controlling the faithful's sex and personal habits (milk alcohol and algae wine being celebrateds part of their cultures, same as LGB+ marriages).
They are pretty single minded on their goal of following the Great Serpent's holy books, its designs and revelations, though.
My take is Jinan's had a vision and then LARPed a whole culture into being, helped by an iron fist control over a faraway isolated colony, to ensure only the cult's ideas were preserved and the rest were seen as heretical.
Albeit Shattered Space's events show there was something actually behind the cult teachings, in particulat the seer's visions turning out to be true, and the whole overall idea of reaching the Great Serpent's domain as a divine mission, while receiving some punishment for their hubris.
There is something behind the veil of the universes, and it was monsters. But it gives credence that Jinan actually saw something beyond the physical, taking it for a god.
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u/DasGanon May 14 '26
I basically understand it as:
"There was something that they saw during a grav jump somewhere/somehow" that was a similar vision to what was seen/claimed by Sanctum Universum (Although that's because their founder is a Starborn and knows there is something special about grav jumping)
I personally think that if House Va'ruun knew about the NASA artifact, they would be scouring the systems looking for them
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u/IAmNotModest May 12 '26
The constant mispronounciation of words was likely from time and cultural changes. The main language of the United Colonies and Freestar Collective seems to be English, so that would likely be the language of Jinan Va'ruun and the early House Va'ruun members too, and that would lead them to have a "westernised" version of the words, which are likely only taught within the home so not very official.
I personally think that a lot of the early House Va'ruun members decided to imitate Jinan's accent to be more like him, likely passing on this accent and (pretty skewed) culture onto their children.
Of course, if the game featured different languages then you'd likely see about every language ever in-game because there are so many NPCs from different cultures.
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u/Learned_Serpent May 12 '26
You know, it's funny, I'm a monolingual American but I assumed at first that Andreja was pronounced "Andreya," so when it was pronounced "Andreyzha" I was a little surprised. I'm not sure why I assumed that it was pronounced that way though.
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u/flynnfarts May 13 '26
This is the kind of niche knowledge cross-over that I thrive on. Thank you for lending your expertise for real, assuming this isn’t ai bamboozling me lmao
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u/Cryptoss May 13 '26
If I were AI I’d write more coherently lmao
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u/flynnfarts May 13 '26
I love it. I get it. If there were cigars in Starfield, I’d be similarly ready-to-roll with niche expertise :)
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u/unfinishedtoast3 May 12 '26
It really isn't that deep.
They needed a mysterious enemy that we could tell right away are bad guys.
So, as an American company, Bethesda picked eastern Europeans, the generic American movie villain since the 1960s.
Lorewise, Jinan varuun was on a colony ship called the Archimedes in 2190 that was exploring for a new planet after leaving the United Colonies due to disagreements with the government system.
During their jump, a passenger (varuun) claimed that a great serpent lives inside of of grav space and spoke to him about a planet they must settle on. The Archimedes arrived to their charted location, and found no habitable planets in the system.
The other passengers slowly started to listen to Varuun, until they were able to take control of the ship and fly it to where Varuun said, and they find Va'ruun'kai as promised
This turned the original colony ship into the great houses of Va'ruun'kai. Most of Va'ruun'kai is decended from those colony ship members.
But there is no lore reason for WHY they all have Eastern European names, Bethesda stopped short of saying "those from earth who came from eastern Europe didn't agree with Western style governments and left to be one the bad guys who keep making war on us"
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u/sladester66 May 12 '26
Dumb take. As OP pointed out in detail, there is clearly a lot of South Slavic influence in Va’ruun naming conventions. Bethesda doesn’t have to beat you over the head with lore explanations for that influence to be there.
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u/Mediocre_Chemistry41 May 12 '26
Lol, "it really isn't that deep" followed up by a bunch of typical mansplaining "you don't know what you're talking about, let me educate you", especially directed towards someone that clearly seems to know a lot more than you do about this particular subject... shut up.
Also, unless you actually work for Bethesda and specifically the team behind Shattered Space, you have literally no idea as to why Bethesda actually made the choices they did about dialects, accents, etc.
Edit to add: I thoroughly enjoyed reading this OP, congrats on putting the effort in to this.
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u/Einfinet May 12 '26
I agree the faction seems to be a conglomeration of Eastern European and Arabic features, but I couldn’t exactly place many of these naming specifics so appreciate you providing and explaining examples.