Talk:Organizations of the Dune universe/Archive 1

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I removed OPEC... the book was released in 1965, the same year that OPEC started.Mfecane 07:14, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

According to it's wiki entry, OPEC was founded on September 17, 1960 and Dune was originally serialized in Analog from 1963 to 1965. Also, in this Omni interview he stated that CHOAM was OPEC:

http://www.caveofbirds.com/rud_bio.html

"While planing the book Dune in the mid sixties, Herbert saw the scarcity of oil to be a big issue, as well as the monopoly of the market. Herbert then thought how could he enter these issues into his fictional world? He then thought what would be in limited quantity in the dessert Herbert said "The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC." (Dune Genesis) OPEC being a monopoly on oil export, Herbert created CHOAM, which was an outer space guild that regulated the flow of spice and traffic to different worlds. The Space Guild was extremely emportant in trade."

So it would seem completely appropriate to include an OPEC reference and comparison. Vaginsh 08:10, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Does any one know the meaning behind the strange words that make up the CHOAM acronym? They make some sense in relation to CHOAM's function, but if anyone has any definite sources or reliable interpretations, they should put them here. GuildNavigator84 05:42, 7 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I've often wondered this myself. I did some digging around, and all I could find is that Honnete is French for Honest, and Ober is German and Dutch for waiter. But that comes out to Combine Honest Waiter Advancer Mercantiles. Swap in some synonyms, and you get Group of Honest Waiter Traders. This makes a little more sense. It's the Ober that's really throws me off. Maybe Herbert derived it from Boer? Group of Honest Farmer Traders? Any help here would be appreciated. Barbarossa359 20:56, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, combine is an old word for a organized set of businessman (you see it often used in the financial sections of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which I just finished reading). I know that the full title of many medieval Italian groups often included the phrase "Honorable merchants", so I would translate it as 'honorable corporation', and 'ober' smacks of 'over' (Wiktionary claims the German adjectival form means 'upper') which is very appropriate for CHOAM's actual role. So I get "Honorable/Honest Mercantile Over/uber-Organization/Corporation/Combine", which is wordy but it strikes me as plausible that a man like Herbert could come up with such a mutt of a verbal decoction. --Gwern (contribs) 03:22 12 June 2007 (GMT)

"Combine Honnete" is a French term meaning "Equitable Partnership". 66.25.141.108 (talk) 16:07, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I came up with 'The Partnership of High-Profit Traders', myself. Unfortunately, anything we come up with is probably going to be OR, but I thought it was nice and tidy. Half  Shadow  22:18, 11 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm thinking perhaps more 'Equitable partnership governing the promotion of trade', myself.

66.25.141.108 (talk) 21:30, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Image
Somebody with .svg-making software needs to take a shot at making a more scalable image than the pixelated .gif currently dwelling on the page.

"&mdash"
"Those CHOAM directorships &mdash they were the real evidence of political power in the Imperium[...]."

The character code didn't go through. Is that something that should be fixed, or something that should just be replaced with a regular double-hyphen m-dash? -Jack Vermicelli (13 Dec 2007)
 * Sorry, that was my sloppy editing, LOL. All fixed. &mdash; TAnthonyTalk 14:33, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

What's that supposed to mean?
Name CHOAM - Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles - what's that supposed to mean? Those are collection of vaguely familiar words which don't form a coherent name. "Combine" - what's that? an association or society or something? "honnete" - what does it mean? I looked it up, seems like in French it means "honest" but it doesn't make sense here. "Ober" - a German preposition meaning "over", well... "Advancer Mercantiles" looks like distorted english/german "advanced merchandise". So I make that name mean "an honest society over advanced merchandise" but it doesn't seem right, besides I'm confused by the mix of so many different languages in such short a name. What do you say? --79.164.74.244 (talk) 13:06, 25 June 2011 (UTC)


 * It's perfectly possible for it to be a mish-mash of languages chosen more for its looks or sound than its meaning or consistency. Herbert does mash stuff together ('Zensunni' comes to mind) and use names like 'Dasein' only distantly linked with the current meaning; it's part of his 'deep history' effect (like Tolkien and Middle Earth, but less well worked out). --Gwern (contribs) 00:07 8 July 2011 (GMT)


 * The word in French "avancer" is the infinitive meaning "to advance". (to promote).  Sluefoot (talk) 01:45, 4 October 2015 (UTC)