The point you raise is absolutely accurate. When it comes to making
up names for civilizations, or characters, one goes for the *sound* of the
name or the sense of the name. "Minbar" is one of those terms whose
meaning, unlike Yangs and Coms (Yanks and Commies) is NOT well known; ask
any 100 people on the street, and it's *very* unlikely that ANY of them
would know what a minbar is. Because the Minbari are very spiritual (well,
half of them, anyway), and because I always liked the *sound* of the word
"minbar," that became the name. It has no dead-on meaning, there is no
translation, it doesn't describe what they are. I don't think it's as
blunt as the examples cited, because it's a *very* obscure term; in all
this time, only that ONE person recognized its origins.

jms