While reading Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising I noticed that sometimes Thrawn is referred to as Mitth'raw'nuru and sometimes as Mitth'raw'nuruodo the latter of which is also the traditional name he has in most appearances outside of the Ascendancy.
Now, I also remember Eli Vanto remarking (in Thrawn: Treason) that the third part of a chiss name has something to do with social status.
My question is now:
Is it known what the -odo suffix to Thrawn's name means and if so what does it mean?
Chiss names are indeed complicated, being constructed from three parts. For the case of Mitth’raw’nurodo, the “Mitth” is the family name (like a surname for us), “raw” is his given name, and then “nuruodo” reflects his relationship to his family. Thrawn was not born into the Mitth family by blood, he was adopted into it, and so he was originally known as Kivu’raw’nuru, since his birth family was the Kivu.
Following his adoption into the Mitth his name changed to Mitth’raw’nuru, and he was known as such in his early military career. However, later the "nuru" termination seems to have changed to "nurodo" with no explanation. A Del Ray editor has tweeted:
The "odo" has a currently unexplained special meaning, and is not part of his Mitth family name. So the scenes when his name ends in "uru" are before he's earned those 3 letters. As for what exactly those 3 letters mean that's something Tim plans to explore. Stay tuned :)
That tweet was made on September 5th 2020, and as far as I know (though I'd love to be corrected!) the hidden meaning has not been revealed yet.
The name change is adressed in a sequence of "Memories" in the recently released Thrawn Ascendancy: Lesser Evil. The least spoilery version is that it's an honorific given to Thrawn after an important victory and to my understanding for his overall skill and dedication to protecting the Chiss.
The suffix was given to Thrawn by the Stybla family (with only 8 non-Styblas having received it before him in the past 5000 years) in accordance with the Mitth Patriarch Thooraki. It's meaning is that it designates the wearer as a "guardian or protector who had proved worthy of the most extraordinary respect", though that seems to not be common knowledge among Chiss. It was given to him for the flawless recovery of an important part of the Stybla's secret Starflash device and to my understanding also for his overall military achievements and dedication to protecting the Ascendancy.
Yes, it is known what the suffix means, it represented an honour awarded for exceptional service and "odo" meant "guardian" in Tybroic, an ancient language.
The "odo" suffix was awarded to Thrawn by the Stybla family - it is one of their highest honours and in the 5,000 years that the honour has existed he was one of only nine Chiss from families other than the Stybla to be so honoured.
The story of how he earned the honour can be found in the 11th "Memories" section of the final book of Timothy Zahn's "Thrawn Ascendancy" trilogy, "Lesser Evil."
