I was wondering what do those “Pandorians” call “Pandora”? The movie Avatar stressed a lot of colonialism, corporate dogmatism and hardcore capitalism though on intergalactic scales (sometimes making themes out of world does a lot to put it on centre stage). Though we learned a lot of the Na’vi culture their word for Pandora is never disclosed. Maybe like the Native Americans they have more than one word for their planet like I got from http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090929071506AApJxQp.
There’s no one “Native American” name for America since the Native Americans spoke many many different languages, most of which were not related to each other at all. I can give you a few words in various North American native, Meso-American and South American languages that are used today in modern speech for different regions of the Americas.
Yvateamérika – the Guarani name for North America. Guarani is an indigenous language of Paraguay spoken by nearly 7 million people.
Amerika Avannarleq – the Kalaallisut name for North America. Kalaallisut is also known as Greenlandic and is the native language of Greenland. It had no relation to Danish though, and is actually an Eskimo-Aleut language.
Ixachitlān Mictlāmpa – the Nahuatl name for the North American continent. Nahuatl was the language of the Aztecs and is still an official language of Mexico today. It is spoken by just about 1.5 million people
Chinchay Awya Yala – Quechua for “North America”. Quechua is an indigenous language of the Andes mountains, spoken by over 10 million people and having official status in Bolivia and Peru.
Tetã peteĩ reko Amérikagua – Guarani for “United States of America”
Wááshindoon bikéyah ałhidadiidzooígíí – Navajo for “United States of America”. Navajo is a polysynthetic language, so their words can get rather long.
ᐊᒥᐊᓕᑲ (amialika) – the Inuktitut name for the United States. Inuktitut is an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken mainly in Canada.
Naalagaaffeqatigiit – the Kalaallisut have one long word by which they call the “United States”.
Tlacetilīlli Tlahtohcāyōtl Ixachitlān – Nahuatl for United States of America.
ᎠᎺᎢ – the Cherokee name for the United States
I realize you were probably looking more for Cheyenne or Dakota names for the North American continent, but these are some of the only indigenous languages of the Americas still spoken today.
Yet, I find Avatar a little disagreeable in concept seeing it’s the colonizer that suddenly goes AWOL and decides to become (both “literally” and “metaphorically”) one of the Na’vi. Not to mention become of their legendary warriors — is it me or is that Robinson Crusoe syndrome repeated? I’m not saying I did not enjoy the movie but I can ignore the fact it is still bombarded with cliches. If the protagonist was someone different (or, could have been a renegade) then the movie’s predictability would have lessened. I would really liked it if both planets crisises were fleshed out a bit more. The Na’vi also seemed uninterested (or as portrayed) to know more of the protagonist’s homeworld. The fact that we do not bond with horses via psyho-biologically via extendable nerve endings is actually quite remarkable and maybe more so to a Na’vi because the fact we can have a bond at all would interest them.
Different Na’vi tribes still share some codes despite their differences and I wished the movie did take a different route. The ending was not so satisfactory to me and lacked a true basis of understanding between human and Na’vi — wouldn’t it better to communicate in the flesh we are born with that God has given us, with those we initially think are different due to different appearances?
The movie mutes what the Na’vi call their planet. By doing that it mutes a great part of their culture (even though it is fictional) So, I hope the sequels do more exposition on that.