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Does "Vader" carry connotations of "father" to a speaker of Galactic Basic Standard?

Science Fiction & Fantasy Asked by airshanemode on August 6, 2021

An English speaker on Earth could be reasonably expected to be familiar with either the Dutch “vader” meaning father or the very similar German “vater”, also meaning father.

Obviously German and Dutch don’t exist the Star Wars universe, but we have been told that dialects and accents in the spoken English from the movies correspond to dialects and accents in Galactic Basic. This leaves it a bit unclear regarding words borrowed from sibling languages which share phonetic ancestry with English but aren’t present in English itself.

Finally, we know from this answer that Sidious named Anakin “Darth Vader” with help from The Force. We don’t know exactly the intent of The Force in giving him that name, though it seems reasonable that it named him something intended to carry at least some meaning to speakers of Galactic Basic, like “Sidious”, “Maul”, and “Plagueis”, with all of their dark connotations.

So can we assume that The Force intentionally gave him a name that carried some connotations of “father”, and that there is some Dutch/German-equivalent cousin of Galactic Basic out there that speakers of Galactic Basic might have some familiarity with, or did The Force name Vader a nonsense word that we wouldn’t expect Basic speakers to infer any meaning from at all?

One Answer

Anakin Skywalker's title was intentional; Lucas deliberately made it "Dark Father" (Darth Vader) for obvious reasons. But if you think about it, Galactic Basic has a different alphabet. This makes it reasonable to assume that it also has its own phonetics and its own words. This means that it's probably just a word that sounds sinister in Basic. So aside from intimidation points, it's also a distinct word that gives Vader a better reputation. So no, it has no connotations to "father" as you have asked. (Basically, German doesn't exist in the galaxy far, far away.)

Answered by Peter Nielsen on August 6, 2021

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