Talk:CHOAM

I removed OPEC... the book was released in 1965, the same year that OPEC started.Mfecane 07:14, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

According to it's wiki entry, OPEC was founded on September 17, 1960 and Dune was originally serialized in Analog from 1963 to 1965. Also, in this Omni interview he stated that CHOAM was OPEC:

http://www.caveofbirds.com/rud_bio.html

"While planing the book Dune in the mid sixties, Herbert saw the scarcity of oil to be a big issue, as well as the monopoly of the market. Herbert then thought how could he enter these issues into his fictional world? He then thought what would be in limited quantity in the dessert Herbert said "The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC." (Dune Genesis) OPEC being a monopoly on oil export, Herbert created CHOAM, which was an outer space guild that regulated the flow of spice and traffic to different worlds. The Space Guild was extremely emportant in trade."

So it would seem completely appropriate to include an OPEC reference and comparison. Vaginsh 08:10, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Does any one know the meaning behind the strange words that make up the CHOAM acronym? They make some sense in relation to CHOAM's function, but if anyone has any definite sources or reliable interpretations, they should put them here. GuildNavigator84 05:42, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

• • I've often wondered this myself. I did some digging around, and all I could find is that Honnete is French for Honest, and Ober is German and Dutch for waiter. But that comes out to Combine Honest Waiter Advancer Mercantiles. Swap in some synonyms, and you get Group of Honest Waiter Traders. This makes a little more sense. It's the Ober that's really throws me off. Maybe Herbert derived it from Boer? Group of Honest Farmer Traders? Any help here would be appreciated. Barbarossa359 20:56, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, combine is an old word for a organized set of businessman (you see it often used in the financial sections of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which I just finished reading). I know that the full title of many medieval Italian groups often included the phrase "Honorable merchants", so I would translate it as 'honorable corporation', and 'ober' smacks of 'over' (Wiktionary claims the German adjectival form means 'upper') which is very appropriate for CHOAM's actual role. So I get "Honorable/Honest Mercantile Over/uber-Organization/Corporation/Combine", which is wordy but it strikes me as plausible that a man like Herbert could come up with such a mutt of a verbal decoction. --Gwern (contribs) 03:22 12 June 2007 (GMT)

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