Mando'a thought. So, since Mandalorians are a warrior culture but majority of Mandalorians are not soldiers, do we think that Mando'a should have separate words for 'warrior' and 'soldier', with different connotation?
Like, a warrior is someone who fights for their honour and their clan, whereas a soldier is someone who fights for money or a greater cause?
Obviously this would still be an honourable profession, like bounty hunting, but I figure Mando'a needs some way to refer to someone who is a soldier and not just a warrior, since all Mandalorians are warriors in their own right.
My first thought for this was a translation of 'hired warrior', some combination of verborir, 'to hire, buy, contract' and verd 'warrior', but the two words were a bit too similar. To be fair, most 'modern' Mando'a, or post-crusade Mando'a, is likely cobbled together from soldiers' Mando'a (not my theory-- credit to @ranahan for this cool idea!), so it makes sense that the two words would be very connected. However, over time, as Mandalorians culturally leaned more into 'warrior' rather than 'soldier', they would need two distinct words for it.
Anyway. So, instead of verborir, I thought that maybe I could take from the word for 'job', bora, but that just kind of recreates verbora, which I take to mean 'contract'.
After that I decided to take a different route-- instead of calling them 'hired warriors', what if I went from the basis of akaan, 'war'?
All of this to say that I suggest that verd has a more 'honourable warrior' connotation, and posit that we use akaan'ad, 'child of war', for 'soldier' instead.
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Excellent question!
Iâm going to go with a no. By analogy with Mandalorians not having a word for a hero, I think they wouldnât have a separate word for a warrior, at least not in the sense of defending oneâs clan and honour, because thatâs expected of every Mandalorian.
Itâs only someone who doesnât fight that needs a separate word. And we do have two! Neverd âcivilianâ (from ne + verd, ânot warrior) and neâkaan ânon-combatant, civilianâ (from ne + akaan(ir), âno warâ or âno battleâ). Which raises the question of who are these words used for? Are they oftenâor everâused for other Mandalorians, or only applied to outsiders? Do they refer more to oneâs role in a particular situation or a permanent status? Whatâs the difference between the two?
And like @johamur said in the notes, thereâs verâverd âmercenaryâ for someone whoâs currently working as a soldier for pay.
But! That doesnât mean we shouldnât have a word like akaanâad. After all, this is a topic that ought to require a lot of nuance for Mandalorians, who also have to interact with other societies who have very different ideas about the roles of warriors and civilians. We could even have the more sympathetic akaanâad vs more clinical akaanii etc etc.
I checked and I had akaanii as âfighter, combatantâ in my dictionary file (and had also considered akaanâad, akaad, and akaar). But to me, the division between soldiers and civilians, combatants and non-combatants, and irregular forces feels like a particularly modern concept. One which Iâm not sure Mandalorians would 100% share. So like. Hmm. I felt the need to come up with a word for a combatant, but was that because thatâs how Iâm used to thinking about it or is it how a mando would think about it?
This is so fascinating! Now Iâm also curious about the reasons behind using a word like akaanâadâŠ
In my mind, ramikade and oriâramikade filled the role of âwarriorâ (with verd being âsoldierâ and all) because of the implications of extra skill/training/lifestyle surrounding it. Would akaanii/akaanâad have that same kind of implied skill difference to it? Someone who is part of the fight but isnât particularly trained/organized for it? A civilian who happens to be fighting?
I think thereâs a lot of nuance to be had here, especially depending on how mandos might consider something like a local militia/levy vs organized verâverde vs a solo beroya when theyâre on a battlefield
So this is my interpretation, but I think Traviss was riffing off of the etymology of English âsoldierâ with verd. Soldier comes ultimately from Latin solidus, i.e. the currency that Roman legionnaires got paid in. And if you look at other words where the root *ver- occurs in (verâverd âmercenary,â veriduur âcourtesan,â beroya âbounty hunterâ), they all seem to have to do with getting paid or earning money. Therefore *ver- likely means something like âwageâ or âto earn.â And well. Soldiering is the iconic mando profession.
As for verd, I think it comes from ver-ad, i.e. one who gets paid or earns a wage. Therefore itâs my interpretation that verd, at least in its original sense, meant a professional soldier or something like our enlisted troops. Rather than someone partaking in your regular inter-clan skirmishes without pay. (Though I think the original crusaders got paid in loot rather than money.) Perhaps it got shortened down from a longer compound word like *verâtraatâade âthe paid troopsâ > verâade > verde. But that sense might have shifted later, because we also have verâverd, which is clearly a later coinage (itâs tautological even lol).
But then again, all Mandalorians are expected to fight. I donât think they have the same concept of civilian/non-combatant as we do, or the same idea of irregular forces that blend civilian and combatants, because all mando civilians can also fight and are expected to defend themselves and their clans.
But Mandalorians have also come into contact with multiple different societies who would have very different ideas and standards about soldiering, might employ unpaid conscripts (which outside of the Neo-Crusaders donât seem to be a mando thing), etc. So perhaps a word like âcombatantâ might be useful, to describe the various kinds of armed forces that might be found on a battlefield? As a sort of a descriptive wider catch-all term, hence literally fighter or someone who does war, paid or not. Personally I would use akaanâad in a more respectful sense or in an identity sense, and akaanii in a more value-neutral sense. But thatâs my interpretations again.
Akalinad might work for a conscript. Literally, it means someone who is requisitioned & comes from the same word I coined for requisitioning materiel/ordnance (akaline, lit. âwar needs/necessitiesâ). Tbh kind of derogatory lol.
tl;dr: I donât know. Iâm trying to work it out aloud here. I think Mandalorians would come at the ideas of who is or isnât a soldier or warrior in a way that is perpendicular to our understanding, but I canât quite wrap my head around the specifics.
I find the idea that "verd" is from "ver'ad" interesting, as well as the possible source of inspiration. Really seems satisfying ... However, I do wonder just how much Jesse Harlin (who created the word "verd" for the Republic Commando songs) was thinking about such things when designing the lyrics for the songs. I didn't get the impression that Traviss received anything other than the song lyrics from Harlin.
Or maybe knowledge of Latin inspired Traviss to make the connection and from there create the "ver" root. Hmm ...