Editing Tau (section)

===Tau Names===
[[File:Tau_Lexicon_2015_ver.1.0.pdf|right|thumb|250px|A fanmade document that dives a little into Tau lexicon]]
Tau have ridiculously long, detailed and actually meaningful names. Their names contain their caste, rank, birth sept, and one or more nicknames earned by them through the course of their lives. Fluff does say that they ''do'' have birth names, but those are only used before tau earn at least one appropriate nickname, as a name given to them by comrades is considered more valuable than one just chosen by random at their birth. The nickname part and its importance surprisingly is actually taken from the Roman culture, which is weird, given most Tau culture tend to be based on China and Japan (except for their social and government structures which are copied almost verbatim from Plato's Republic).

Also, do note the lack of last names, which is expected, since Tau society pretty much have no institute of a family, with children being raised in centralized facilities apart from their parents. As a Tau grows, moves through ranks and achieves the respect of their comrades their name changes appropriately, switching the rank part, adding new nicknames and sometimes dropping the old and outdated ones. For example, when Farsight was still a lowly fire warrior, his name was '''Shas'La Vior'La Shoh''' (Fire Caste Private of the Hot-Blooded sept Inner Light), and at the "present days" '''Shas'O Vior'La Shovah Kais Mont'yr''' (Fire Caste Commander of the Hot-Blooded sept Farsight Skillful Blooded). How the fuck Tau bureaucracy is able to keep track of their population with their names constantly changing is a mystery, but it seems they have no problem with that, probably because they just track ID numbers when names are too much of an issue like most sane people who work with databases.

For the sake of convenience Tau often use shortened versions of names, almost always dropping the sept part and secondary nicknames, and if speaking within one caste the caste part too, so in the case of Farsight other fire warriors could refer to him as O'Shovah, while for example an Ethereal would call him Shas'O'Shovah (assuming Farsight allows this; given his seething hatred of Ethereals he's the type who'd force them to use his full name out of spite). Humans and other non-Tau often get this system wrong and shorten the names in a ways that make little sense: for example, Imperium's Taros invasion force thought the Taros' chief Ethereal's name was Aun'El, which was only his caste and rank, and as the book was mostly written from the Imperium's standpoint, we still don't know what his actual name was.

Often IRL, the names are transliterated (saying "Farsight" instead of "O'Shovah"). Presumably the Imperium itself does this as well.
 
One final stroke of Tau naming is that as they abandon their true (birth) names it makes them even more resistant to sorcery and daemonic powers that often require the target's true name to amplify their effect or even make the spell work at all.