I am not sure if this is common knowledge and that I am saying already known stuff, but Orrian location names are very much Arabic and I can only assume that is because of Orr being next to the Crystal Desert, which has actual mixes of Arabic elements in many corners of the game. Why do I know this? Because I have an Arab father, and I was raised in the Middle East as a muslim in an Arabic school.
When I was doing map completion yesterday on Henri, I noticed how some points of interests in Orr had ‘Al’ in them, and I immediately assumed it would be gibberish since that is all I find in western made media when it comes to anything ‘exotic’. Bring some sound, put ‘al’ in front of it, and voilà, you have ‘Arabic’ in your media. But no, I reread the names and realized that they actually have a translation, since the team actually written in a way that you can guess how it’s read in Arabic if you’re a native or have experience in native Arabic environments.
I will list all points of interests in Orr that I found that have Arabic and the most likely meant translation (as an Arabic speaker myself):
• Izz-al-Din Sarayi
With the context surrounding Orr’s lore and the Human lore + Charr/Human lore, this can very much be ‘عز الدين صراعي’. It’s a very blotchy sentence since it’s grammatically incorrect, but it basically means ‘I fight with pride for my religion’, ‘I battle with pride for my religion’. It makes sense because Humans are very religious in GW2, and Orr is even more so, while Charr denounce higher power and think Humans for shit. And they had a battle on Orr. BOOM.
• Din al-Jindi
This is a very clear one, words used in Arabic lessons a lot to form simple sentences. ‘دين الجندي’ which means ‘The soldier’s religion’.
• Bakkir Sarayi
Sounds like ‘بكّر صراعي’ or ‘بكير صراعي’, which sounds like ‘Early Battle’ in both. One’s just traditional and the other’s Lebanese dialect.
• Several PoIs in Malchor’s Leap having ‘Bayt’ in them
Which is just like the Grove having ‘House of Caithe’, ‘House of Niamh’ and so on. It’s again, grammatically incorrect, but Bayt means house or home. They even used Arabic names with them, but in wrong order. Still, to me this is like a very big thing.
• Zho'qafa Catacombs area
Sounds like ‘ذو كفه’ which is like ‘with his palms’, or could be with his stance, several different possibilities.
This may seem like a far reach for representation to some people, but these make sense, they mean something, so it can’t be a coincidence. I’m just happy Arabic was acknowledged in some way instead of the fake Arabic they use in media to make it seem ‘exotic’ or made as a parody.
Weeeeooooeeeeooooo
