Kir people

Kir

Languages
Kiravic Coscivian
Religion
Christianity, Coscivian religions, Islam

The Kir people are an ethnic group traditionally inhabiting lowland areas across the upper-middle latitudes of Great Kirav. The most populous Coscivian ethnic group, Kir people have a common identity rooted in perceptions of shared ancestry, folkways, and use of the Kiravic language. The Kir people have played a central role in the history of Coscivian civilisation since the end of the Third Empire, and their culture is a primary influence on the wider national culture of Kiravia.

Distribution

Today Kir people can be found throughout the Kiravian Federacy, particularly in urban areas. However, most live in the Mid-Oceanic and Mid-Continental zones of Great Kirav. Kir account for an outright majority of the population in the states of Kernea, Vironat, and Karrakar.

Diaspora

Millions of Kir people and people of Kir descent live outside the Kiravian Federacy, whether as expatriates, immigrants, or native-born descendants of Kir migrants and settlers, a legacy of the historic and present influence of Kiravia overseas.

Many (perhaps most) of the Kiravian colonists who settled in what is now the Cape and Paulastra were ethnic Kir. However, due to the subsequent emergence of strong national identities in these countries and the greater salience of generalised Coscivian identity as a social category, it is believed that relatively few people of Kir descent in mainland South Crona would still identify specifically as Kir today.

Subgroups

Regional and dialectal subgroups

• White Kir - Traditionally associated with Kastera
• Red Kir or Kandans - Native to the region of Kaviska surrounding the city of Evira, but now settled across much of the hemiboreal belt from Śeridan to the Northwest Territories.
• Green Kir - Native to northern Kaviska, Serikorda, Arkvera, adjacent northeastern hill tracts, and Karrakar.
• Old Niyaskans - The traditional Kir inhabitants of Niyaska, now a small minority in their historic homeland.
• Svéarans - Originally from the Svéara Peninsula and adjacent Bissáv State, Svéaran Kir have scattered across the world as sailors, merchants, and pioneers.
• Lékaśran Kir - Traditionally associated with Váuadra.
• Xusran Kir - Traditionally associated with Hiterna.
• Sou'western Kir - Kir and Kiravic-speakers in Sixua Province and Iunan Province.
• Fenian Kir - Clans of mixed Gaelic and Kir ancestry, most of whom speak the Fenian Kiravic dialect with strong Fhasen influence.

Caste subgroups

• Tróturkir - A tanning and butchering caste of Etivéra and Váuadra, historically marginalised as harsitem.
• Veıronem' - Small caste group living mainly in Kaviska, Kastera, and Kernea, traditionally employed as turnip-hoërs.
• Basprovians - Fluvial fishing caste of southern Hiterna, Kernea, and the central provinces.

Religious and sectarian subgroups

• Krakyerkir - Ethnic Kir Shi'a Muslims.
• Muhakir - Ethnic Kir Sunni Muslims, many of harsitem background.

Culture

Kinship

The Kir have a merged bifurcate understanding of kinship reflected in the terminology of the Kiravic language. One's father and his brothers and one's mother and her sisters are referred to by the same base term (stur and enna), while one's father's sisters and one's mother's brothers . Accordingly, one's parallel cousins - the offspring of one's father's brother or mother's sister - are referred to as siblings, differentiated by degree; while one's cross-cousins - the offspring of one's father's sister or mother's brother - are referred to as cousins. Like all Coscivian groups, the Kir trace descent through the patriline. An extended family unit sharing the same grandfather is known as a danrin, while a larger kinship group claiming common descent from an arbitrarily higher-order ancestor (typically a great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather) is known as a dóntra.

Unlike Southerners and Eshavians, the Kir do not practise cross-cousin marriage.

The apical Kir kinship unit of cultural importance is the clan (tanak). Kir clans originally shared a common surname, though over time 'family names' denoting a particular dóntra displaced clan surnames among most non-elite families, with the clan name being retained as a secondary part of an individual's full name. Kirish clans had already ceased to function as socio-political or economic units by the time of Christianisation, and today they are mainly of genealogical interest.

Language

Main article: Kiravic Coscivian
The Kir are native speakers of Kiravic Coscivian, which owes its status as a federal official language and nationwide language of business and inter-ethnic communication to the influence of the Kir. Kiravic is a polycentric language with numerous dialects and significant variations in vocabulary, phonology, and even grammar across its native range.

In writing, ethnic Kir overwhelmingly prefer the nohærikíma register of written Kiravic, also known as 'Literary Kiravic'. Literary Kiravic does not closely correspond with any of the spoken dialects, but native Kiravic-speakers consider its recension of the language to be more "organic" and "mature" than the government-sponsored Standard Kiravic, which many native speakers find simultaneously "artificial", "oversimplified", and "corporate", and which has a history of being designed for and primarily taught to non-native speakers outside the Kir heartland.

Dialectal Kiravic carries higher social status than regional dialects of most other languages, and dialectal speech is used even in formal contexts, such as speeches before the Stanora. Most ethnic Kir thus communicate orórona ardē, nohærix kímē ([by] "dialect in speech, Nohæric in script"). This unusual situation is due to several factors, including widespread rejection of Standard Kiravic by native speakers when it was promoted by the Kiravian Union, and regionalised provincial control of broadcasting and education since reunification, which helped to preserve the dignity and transmission of regional dialects.

Agriculture and Food

The Kir are a traditionally agrarian people, and much of their identity, folklore, and foodways are rooted in the agricultural lifestyle of their native region. The staple crops of the Kir heartland are the indispensible potato, dralm, and Coscivian cuckwheat.

Changing market conditions brought on by the expansion of intercontinental trade in agricultural commodities from the latter half of the 19th century AD induced many farms in the Kir regions to shift away from food staples to high-value industrial crops such as rapeseed and flax in which Kiravia enjoyed a comparative advantage.

Under the post-verticalist mode of agrarian social organisation, most large-scale cultivation of onions and leeks in the Kir lands was undertaken by ethnic minorities, such as the Kernans and Phrydhians.

Religion and Spirituality

The heritage religion of the Kir people as a whole falls under the umbrella of "Lunar monotheism" that developed from prehistoric selenolatry, which is shared with most other Coscivian peoples and continues today in the form of Sarostivism as an institutional religion. During the process of Christianisation, many folk-Sarostivist images, symmbols, and devotions were redefined in a Christian theological framework and incorporated into the rituals and iconography of the Coscivian Orthodox Church and subsequently the Coscivian Catholic Church.

Timespace

Like other Coscivian peoples, the Kir conceptualise time in spatial terms and generally do not view time as an independent natural force or a linear progression, much less a currency-like expendable resource as Ænglo-Gothic cultures do, but rather as a rotating series of subdivisible compartments. As such, the Kir do not speak of 'making time' for something, but they can 'carve [it] out'. Time is not 'spent', but rather 'filled', and not 'wasted' but rather 'hollowed' or 'stuffed', depending on the context.

Traditional Kir timekeeping divides the day into four quarters, each of which is subdivided into five marr for a total of 20 marr in a day. Each marr in turn comprises 20 þórr (3.6 minutes). Although most modern Kir are familiar with the Occidental 24-hour clock, which is used in parallel for many business purposes (as well as in scientific-technical contexts and the military), most schedules in Kiravic-speaking regions are still set according to the quarter-marr-þórr clock, including for civil purposes.