Last month, while reading Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates, copyright 1921, I came across the following remarkable passage in the short story “The Ruby of Kishmoor”:
“As she spoke, she drew aside her veil, and disclosed to the vision of our hero a countenance of the most extraordinary and striking beauty. Her luminous eyes were like those of a Jawa, and set beneath exquisitely arched and penciled brows.”
I did a double-take. Her eyes were like those of a Jawa???!!!
Now to me, ever since I was four years old, the word Jawa has meant a little alien guy who lives long ago in a galaxy far far away, wears a brown cloak, shoots droids for a living, drives a sandcrawler and shouts “Outini!” for no apparent reason. Oh, and who has little luminous eyes. I had about as much expectation of finding the word “Jawa” in a 1921 short story about pirates as I did of finding Jimmy Hoffa under my sink.
My Merriam-Webster dictionary does not have the word “Jawa” in it. Neither does the Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary in my college library. Query: what the hell was Howard Pyle was talking about when he said the heroine’s eyes were like those of a Jawa?
The fact that the eyes of Pyle’s heroine were “luminous,” and luminous eyes are the most prominent physical feature (indeed the only apparent physical feature) of Jawas in Star Wars suggests that the similarity of names is not a coincidence.
According to the Star Wars Card Game, ‘Utinni’ means “Come Here.”
(which still doesn’t make sense when, in the video games, the Jawas always scream “Utinni” when blasted to smithereens.)
[nitpick]
As for Lucas taking words and names and using them in the movies, well, he apparently does that a lot. The worst case, in my opinion, is the names of three aliens: Klaatu, Barada, and Nikto. Ok, it’s probably a send-up to the original source, but still…
When do we see Jawas get blasted? In Ep 4 the Jawa slaughter happens off-screen. Might you be thinking of that “Troopers” parody? (Which, tho funny as hell, is probably not canon )
“Klaatu barada nikto!” is a command to the robot Gort in the classic sci-fi picture The Day the Earth Stood Still (1952). Klaatu is the alien visitor played by Michael Rennie.
Lucas didn’t do this, you can blame the sculptors and designers, who named most of the background creatures themselves, nd those that weren’t already named by them were subsequently named by Lucas Licensing.
Having said that, George does borrow names a lot, most obviously Tatouine, which is a Tunisian township close by to where the desert scenes were filmed.
There is also Talus and Tralus, two SW planets, which are also bones in the human leg. And lots of other SW place names are repetitive… Vjun-Dxun, Alderaan-Onderon, Tatooine-Dantooine, etc.
In Men in Black, K makes mention of a Corellian Death Ray.
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