Windu
[ˈwɪnˌdu]Windu is a Javanese word for a cycle of eight years — eight tahun make one windu. As a dog name it comes almost entirely from Mace Windu, the Jedi Master played by Samuel L. Jackson, who carries the only purple lightsaber in the films.
Temperament
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There is a real word, and it means eight years
Before it was a Jedi, windu was a unit of time. In the Javanese calendar, eight tahun make one windu. A Javanese year runs about 355 days, so the cycle works out at roughly 2,835 days — a little under eight Gregorian years. The calendar runs a five-day cycle called pasaran and a seven-day cycle called saptawara alongside each other, and the windu is the longer beat sitting above both.
That is a genuinely interesting thing for a name to mean, and it is a better answer than the one our own listing gives. We currently tag Windu with the meaning "guardian", which is not supported by anything and was generated rather than researched. The Javanese cycle is the reading that can be defended.
Mace Windu and the purple lightsaber
Almost nobody arrives at this name from the Javanese calendar. Mace Windu is the Jedi Master who sits on the Jedi High Council in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, played by Samuel L. Jackson and introduced in The Phantom Menace in 1999.
Two details about him matter if you are considering the name. The first is the lightsaber: it is purple, and it is the only purple blade in the films, because Jackson asked for one so that he would be identifiable in the climactic battle. The second is the name itself, which George Lucas is reported to have had in drafts as far back as the early 1970s, when the character was called Mace Windy.
Mace is an ordinary English word with two unrelated meanings — a spice, the aril around a nutmeg, and a ceremonial staff of office. Neither half of the name is a surname in the ordinary sense.
How Windu fits the rules a dog name has to follow
Windu is two syllables, five letters, stress on the first: WIN-doo. The ending is the useful part. A long -oo vowel is one of the easiest sounds for a dog to pick out of background noise, which is why so many sheepdog and gun-dog names end on it.
It also survives being shortened, which not every name does. Windu trims to Win, or to Winnie, without turning into a different word or colliding with another cue. If you go with Winnie you have joined one of the most common dog names in the English-speaking world, so expect to hear it called back at you from the other end of the park.
The one caution is the w at the front. It is a quiet consonant, easily masked by traffic or wind, so the first syllable is the part a dog may miss. Emphasise the ending when you call and you will never notice.
Common questions
What does Windu mean?
In Javanese it is a cycle of eight years, used as a unit in the traditional Javanese calendar. The meaning "guardian", which appears in some places including our own listing, has no source behind it.
Is Windu a surname?
Not a real one. George Lucas coined it for the character — early drafts had Mace Windy — and it does not correspond to a documented family name in the way that, say, Kenobi or Skywalker do not either.
Sources
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