Halo 2 the wait is over but what about the “Arabic” sounding aliens?
Halo 2, the Xbox videogame, has been a long time coming and has missed seemingly countless launch dates (it is a Microsoft product) but it finally arrived. And my son Matt tracked down a rare copy in San Francisco on Wednesday after we visited half-a-dozen different stores. It turned out that the Good Guys had a secret stash. “No one seems to know that we stock games,” said a salesperson at the Van Ness store.
I finally got Matt off the game at 3am this morning then he was back at it by 10am. But he made an interesting comment, “What’s with all the Arabic sounding names of the aliens?”
I looked at the booklet that came with Halo 2 and there are indeed, some names that do not require too much stretching of the imagination to notice an “Arabic” twang to the types of aliens encountered in the game. There are the Sangheili, described in the booklet as having a “thirst for human blood and vengeance for the atrocity at Halo, and their loyalty is unquestioned.” There are also Jiralhanae of “simian origin” and the Kig-yar.
The leaders of the alien forces are the Prophets described as the “guiding light and directors” that will lead the alien forces “to truth and perfection.”
By the way, “Hala” is Arabic for “halo around the moon.” Fans of the game will be familiar with the circular world around a moon, on which the gory battles with the aliens take place.
I’m sure that the Arabic sounding alien names are not intentional and most probably an artifact of the society we live in.
