The Chiss language, Cheunh, was complex and densely-constructed, expressing complicated ideas by combining smaller elements into intricate words and phrases. It was hard for outsiders to understand, and the Chiss believed that it was quite impossible for non-Chiss to learn to speak it properly. Given the near-Human genealogy of the Chiss, it is unclear how much store can be put by their suggestions that 'aliens' such as baseline Humans simply had inadequate vocal mechanisms: simple chauvinism may have factored into this perception, or alternatively, understanding might have depended on subtle phonetic contrasts which non Cheunh-speakers would lose the ability to distinguish or articulate if Cheunh was learned after infancy.
Linguistically, Cheunh was highly synthetic, which is to say that complex meaning was conveyed by forming compound words from conjunctions of sense-bearing word-elements known as morphemes. While not unusual as a linguistic principle, synthetic construction appears to have been taken to extremes by the Chiss, and it may be that communicating in Cheunh required a conscious awareness of individual morphemes and phonemes and a subtle ear for complex linguistic relationships, far more than was demanded of, for instance Basic-speakers. Such a sensitivity would also explain the remarkable acuity shown by at least some Chiss in picking out important recurring agglutinations from long phrases of alien languages that they had not previously encountered. One factor that certainly added to the complexity of the language was the fact that written Cheunh was not set down in a phonetic alphabet like the Aurebesh, but rather, assembled using ideograms. And on top of all this, at least some phrases in the language were highly idiomatic – the pejorative moactan teel meant literally "fair-haired", implying that something about the addressee was non-Chiss, and hence barbarous.
Outsiders, however, had little exposure to Cheunh except through Chiss personal names. A Chiss was most often known and addressed by a short core name, which was an abbreviated form of a longer full name, consisting of three distinct primary sections; perhaps inevitably, Chiss full names were often hard for those who were not native Cheunh speakers to pronounce correctly. Usage of the full name appears to have indicated politeness or formality, whereas the core name was apparently used with in situations where brevity and simplicity was preferred, as among friends, in combat communications, or with aliens such as Basic-speakers, who could not easily master the complex phonetics of the full name. The predominance of core names, at least in communication with outsiders, was such that a number of such names were recorded without the full name being known, such as Prakk, Kayree, Lev, Szardra, Voss and Zilvad.
It seems clear, however, that the core name was typically formed by combining the short central section of the name with the last sound of the preceding section and the opening sound of the following. Thus Thrawn was more formally Mitth'raw'nuruodo, Commander Stent of the House Phalanx was Kres'ten'tarthi and Captain Talshib, the line commander of the diplomatic ship Chaf Envoy, was Brast'alshi'barku.
However, some evidence suggests that several somewhat different semantic and phonetic patterns were used in constructing the full names of different Chiss. Most notably, it appears that a primary familial relationship could be indicated by both the opening and closing elements.
On the one hand, the Chaf diplomats Chaf'orm'bintrano ("Formbi") and Chaf'ees'aklaio ("Feesa") bore the name of the Ruling Family to which they belonged as the first element of their full name, and this also defined the opening sound of their core name. Likewise the brothers Mitth'raw'nuruodo and Mitth'ras'safis were both (adoptive) members of the Eighth Ruling Family, suggesting that this family was known as the Mitth. A similar family relationship is implied between General Prard'ras'kleoni ("Drask") and Station Commander Prard'enc'iflar, although it is not known whether "Prard" is one of the Nine Families.
This usage, which appears to be the 'normal' (or at least the most common) naming convention among the Chiss is also borne out by the name of Admiral Ar'alani of the Defense Hierarchy, and probably that of Sev'rance Tann, a Separatist General from the Clone Wars. It is known that senior Chiss military personnel surrendered Family status on assuming high command. and both these women appear to have discarded the initial element of their name to signify this elevation.
In contrast, the name of House Nuruodo is attested only as a final element. Somewhat confusingly, it appears in the name of Mitth'raw'nuruodo, whose House we would have otherwise taken to be called Mitth; it is also found in the names of the female officers Ina'ganet'nuruodo and Hess'irolia'nuruodo, and in the differently-presented names of military academy commandant Gimald Nuruodo and Clawcraft pilot Shawnkyr Nuruodo. Adding to the confusion, while Mitth'raw'nuruodo causes semantic problems, all the other "Nuruodo" names diverge to a greater or lesser degree from the expected transcription pattern outlined above.
In the case of the female CEDF officers Ina'ganet'nuruodo ("Ganet") and Hess'irolia'nuruodo ("Irolia"), while the overall structure of the names was broadly the same, the core name and the central element of the full name appear to have been identical with, without obvious input from the opening and closing sections. In contrast, the names of Gimald Nuruodo and Shawnkyr Nuruodo appear to have combined core name and House name, in a manner more typical of other species' forename-surname usages. It is possible that Shawnkyr, spending a considerable amount of time in New Republic space as part of Jag Fel's squadron, used this form instead of the traditional Chiss convention during her stay to better integrate with, or at least present a more familiar name form for the New Republic personnel.
Another Chiss with an anomalous names was the important historical figure Jer'jo Cam'co, who may have predated standard Chiss naming conventions—though it is worth noting that as the founding Syndic of the CEDF, he may likely to have belonged to House Nuruodo, along with most of the other individuals recorded with anomalous names.
A number of factors may have contributed to the variety within Chiss naming patterns. There may have been a genuine variety of naming systems in use, some more subtly differentiated than others. The dense and complex phonetic and morphological structure of Cheunh may have had unusual effects on pronunciation. Alternatively, at least part of the distinction may have been due to the use of varying standards of transliteration conventions—not least because written Cheunh was apparently a primarily ideographic language, and "literal" transcriptions may not have adequately reflected pronunciation.
With questions of transcription and pronunciation in mind, we can consider the name of Aristocra Mitt'swe'kleoni ("Tswek"), the legate dispatched by the Ascendancy to Coruscant in 35 ABY. The first element of his name looks as though it indicates membership of the Mitth Family, but compositional factors would appear to have influenced pronunciation of the final phone, with a sound usually corresponding approximately to a dental fricative having morphed into an alveolar stop. It is unclear how, if at all, such a distinction would have been marked in written Cheunh.
Turning from questions of linguistics to questions of meaning, two possible, if perhaps only partial, solutions can be suggested that might explain the apparent inconsistencies in Chiss naming patterns. Although "Chaf", "Mith", and "Prard" are only attested as opening units, and "Nuruodo" only as a closing one, the fact that the opening and closing sections of names alike could apparently indicate lineage descent may mean that both were typically tokens of ancestry, perhaps indicating the families of the father and paternal grandfather, or the father's male-line ancestry and the mother's female-line lineage. This would also explain why Thrawn's full name included the two name-elements Mitth and Nuruodo.
Additional to this, it can be observed that some Chiss could choose to align themselves with more than two houses, so unless such a choice implied a name-change, it may be that a Chiss could belong to a House not directly indicated in his full name, explaining the utility of the core name plus House name construction. For instance, it might have been permissible to refer Chaf'orm'bintrano as "Formbi Chaf", while Shawnkyr Nuruodo may (speculatively) have had a full name in which the first and last element indicated familial ties without incorporating the name of the House to which she belonged. Certainly, known members of Thrawn's Household Phalanx, such as Krest'en'tarthi and his subordinates Brosh, Sorn, and Dreel, have names that are show know sign of the primary family-indicative elements.
Alternatively, it is not impossible that many or most of the apparent inconsistencies are simply discrepancies of flawed or eccentric Aurebesh transcription, and that "Sev'rance Tann" and "Shawnkyr Nuruodo" should have been something like "Sev'rance'tann" and "Shawnk'yr'nuruodo" under the standard transcription, with the conventional core names "Vrancet" and "Kyrn."
Ultimately, however, as with all aspects of Chiss culture, much still remains unclear about how the Cheunh language and the associated pattern of personal names operated
