Ngw people (ŋɯ́ / NGOO)

The Ngw were a pre-classical people from the Old Continent. They came from the Ngw Kingdom. After their homeland was conquered by the Feogh Empire, the Ngw people were assimilated into the Feogh Empire or fled to the neighboring Tsounya Kingdom.

Naming Traditions

Unisex names

Given names consisted of one or two words, typically either a noun or a noun plus an adjective. Names were neither strongly gendered nor standardized; in theory, any word or combination of words could serve as a name. If a person had a clan name, the given name came first.

Family names

In the Ngw Kingdom, clan names were granted to noble families by the king. The clan name followed the given name, was was affixed with the possessive suffix -nú when the full name was given. So, a person with the given name Fal and the clan name Khàrah would have the full name Falnú Khàrah ("Fal of Kharah"). Clan names were inherited patrilineally (unless the father lacked a clan name or was unknown) and were not changed upon marriage.
Commoners did not have surnames, but bynames were in occasional use, often to differentiate between people with the same name. These bynames were usually descriptive in some way (such as a person's occupation or birthplace) and were not a fixed or legal part of a person's name. Patronymics (and, more rarely, matronymics) were in occasional use, primarily colloquial.

Other names

When the Ngw people were assimilated into the Feogh Empire, they were made to conform to Feogh naming conventions. Feogh names consisted of a matronymic and a given name; additionally, each individual had a tribe and clan name. Ngw names would be adopted phonologically and morphologically into the Feogh language, so Falnú Khàrah, if their mother's given name was Súlì Ba, would be called Sulibádh feing Falo ("Fal, child of Suliba") and use Chara as their clan name. There was no Ngw equivalent to tribe names, so many Ngw simply used Ngu in place of one. Those without surnames often used their place of birth or the name of a parent or ancestor in place of a clan name.
Ngw people living in the Tsounya Kingdom followed Tsounya naming practices, which did not differ substantially from traditional Ngw practices. It was common practice, even before the conquest of the Ngw Kingdom, for Ngw and Tsounya names and other proper nouns to be translated when speaking the other language; both languages were related and shared a logographic writing system, where each character represented a word. Thus, the same person would be known as either Falnú Khàrah or Phālnú Shârras, the Ngw and Tsounya readings of the same name, depending which language was being spoken.

Culture

Major language groups and dialects

The Ngw language was the dominant language in the Ngw Kingdom. The standard variety was spoken predominantly in the north-central region; a number of other dialects existed. The southwestern dialect was the most substantially different, being more similar to the Tsounya dialects spoken across the border than to standard Ngw.
Ngw speakers were permitted and even encouraged to continue using their language under Feogh and subsequent (TODO: what did that part of the empire become?) rule, during which time it gained an influx of borrowings from the imperial language. In the Tsounya Kingdom, however, the Ngw language gradually fell out of use, as Ngw minorities used Tsounya as their everyday language.

Major organizations

Two religions predominated prior to the conquest of the Ngw Kingdom. One was the traditional polytheism that was widespread in various forms throughout the near south. The other was a nontheistic mystical religion called Naerism. These faiths were at odds with one another, with polytheists seeing Naerists as atheists and witches and Naerists considering the polytheists "unenlightened"; nevertheless, they begrudgingly coexisted.
The Tsounya Kingdom had strict policies on religion. Though polytheism was the Tsounya state religion, Ngw polytheists had less religious freedom under the law than did the Naerists. This was due to the ban on "dangerous" heretical teachings. One such heresy was the denial of eternal life; one of the core beliefs of Tsounya state religious doctrine was that the righteous would be freed from the cycle of rebirth and live eternally in Heaven, many Ngw polytheists believed that the cycle of rebirth was inescapable and infinite and the only eternal beings were the gods themselves. The Tsounya government made no attempt to regulate the teachings of the "atheist" Naerists, though Naerists were forbidden from proselytizing or practicing "black magic" (the latter of which was already forbidden under Naerist precepts).
The Ngw were technically permitted religious freedom under Feogh rule, though this came with a glaring caveat: all subjects of the empire were required to recognize the sun goddess Feogh (for whom the empire was named) as the surpreme deity. This policy was problematic for both the polytheists, who worshipped an even greater surpreme deity they called the Divine, and the Naerists, whose philosophy fundamentally opposed the existence of gods. Consequently, many temples which were dedicated to or even acknowledged the Divine were seized or destroyed, as were Naerist temples which refused to adopt a theistic viewpoint.