Author's Note:
Occurs after the events of Team Players and The Toll. The naming system I describe is not from the manga, although the manga does mention that Ishvalans consider their names sacred and don't share them widely.
Winry heard people called by her own last name, or her parents' first names, more often in Ishvala than in any other part of Amestris.
Ishvalans took naming very seriously. This didn't just apply to their sacred "real" names, which were known only to their close kin, and hardly ever to any Amestrian at all. It also applied to their "public" names, which were what everyone else knew them by, and were usually what was entered in the government records. That was why Ishvalans who had been treated at the clinic run by Winry's parents in Kanda loved to give their children public names like ha-Rockbell, ha-Sara, or ha-Yuri. The prefix "ha" was short for the phrase "Ishvala-ha", meaning something like "Praise be to Ishvala", a phrase used at all the happiest festivals and occasions. Adding a name meant that the child, or a parent of the child, had been helped by that person. It had everything the Ishvalans loved in a public name - an invocation of Ishvala, a happy connotation, and a reference to a powerful or highly respected third party or kinsperson.
Captain Jean Havoc was watching five Ishvalan boys playing a rough game of ball-and-shove. Over the years, he had picked up the basics of the game, and sometimes played it with Ishvalans or other soldiers who knew how. This was a new group of boys. If it were possible that anyone didn't know who Jean was, then it could be one of these boys, since none of them had ever met him before.
Of course, they did recognize him. But their reaction to him coming over was one he hadn't seen before. When he'd first started in the Ishvalan Relations Office in Gunja after the Promised Day, the most common reaction had been for kids this young to run away. That wasn't very common anymore. More usual these days were for the kids to keep playing, keeping an eye on him but pretending to ignore him. Sometimes they would even be brave enough to ask him to join the game. Sometimes he did, but usually he would use an invitation like that just to socialize with them from the sidelines.
But this was completely new. They had all stopped playing and sat down, arranging themselves around the tallest, biggest boy in the group. Within seconds, they had gone from a pack of pre-teen boys playing ball-and-shove to formal trade/status verification mode.
Havoc couldn't help glancing around to check whether the sun was still in the sky. Boys this young didn't DO this. But the boys, though serious, looked more proud than scared.
The boy in the center started the formal adult introduction ritual with the usual gesture from the ground to his forehead. Jean sat cross-legged in front of him, and repeated the gesture.
It had been a while since Jean had actually sat down on bare ground for this kind of thing. Usually, there was a least a rug to sit on, and sometimes the ritual contact with the earth was satisfied by touching what Jean thought of as "blessing sand", a bag of sand he kept in a pocket and brought out for such purposes, and he could sit in a chair. Then Jean waited. It was up to the boys, being both younger and lower status, to offer him their names first.
The boy in the center intoned the short versions of the public names of the other four boys with him. Then he gave his full public name, in the chant-like formal style. Then, just as Jean was trying to figure out if he'd actually heard "Havoc" in there somewhere, the boy added the much shorter version meant for ordinary use: ba-Havoc.
That didn't sound right. The usual form would be "ha" not "ba". Colonel Miles had been watching thus far with some amusement, but now he interrupted in Ishvalan, seeming to be upset with the boys about something.
Jean motioned to ask him to be quiet. True, these were just boys, not adults, and it would have been perfectly acceptable if he had not sat down with them in the first place. But having started, he didn't want to insult the boys by stopping now. Jean matched the formality of the boy in the center by intoning his own full name, rank, and military office, as he was accustomed to doing with adults.
The boy who had called himself ba-Havoc continued. "You saved my life when my family was returning to Amestris from Xerxes. You are my name-friend."
Jean didn't recall any such episode. "A lot of children have been helped by our work with the Ishvalan Relations Office," he said, racking his brain to remember something that might fit. A name-friend was based on a concrete event, and Ishvalans loved telling the story behind such a name. In fact, it looked like the boy was getting ready to tell the story behind his own name.
"Then why are you ba-Havoc?" asked Miles.
"The priest said we could not use 'ha'," answered the boy, who clearly did not seem to consider this an issue.
Jean was troubled by Miles's reaction, but it looked like this was just another kind of name-friend, and the stories behind those were always happy. Mostly.
"Tell your story, ba-Havoc," Jean prompted. That felt weird. He remembered Winry talking about how strange it felt calling someone ha-Rockbell.
"It happened when Bradley, the cursed, was Fuhrer in Amestris, and after the peace was declared. My parents were in Gunja, returning from Xerxes to search for kinfolk in Amestris, when a camp of Blues came to Gunja, and Bradley was in the camp. My mother and father hid with me under the sand. Then one of the Blues found their place under the sand, and killed my mother and father. But I was sheltered between my mother and Ishvala, and so I did not die. Then came ba-Havoc, ba-Mustang, ba-Hawkeye, and ha-Breda. Havoc ran with me to Mustang's field tent, where ha-Furey, and ha-Falman were keeping watch. Then Mustang used alchemy to build a mighty shelter under the sand. And so Strong-Arm tunneled and brought out me and my uncle and aunt, who adopted me, and my uncle's brother."
"Yes, I remember that," said Jean, who had figured out what 'ba' must mean. "Kain - that's Furey, said you were about three months old back then. You called him ha-Furey, right?"
"Yes," said ba-Havoc. "Aunt and Uncle almost named me ha-Furey, because he gave me water, but they said it was you who saved my life by bringing me back, so you are my name-friend even though you're not a 'ha'."
When they were back at the office, Jean talked to Miles. "So 'ba' isn't good? It can't be all bad if the kid's parents used it."
"It's complicated. Strictly speaking, it just means we can't ask Ishvala to bless you. But for someone to be so bad that you can't ask Ishvala's blessing on him - that's pretty bad. And since you're a soldier - it's practically calling you a murderer."
"The kid didn't seem to take it that way. He just seemed to think it was second best to 'ha'."
"The younger Ishvalans, especially the ones who've been helped by the restoration, tend to look at it as just meaning 'any Amestrian soldier who fought in the Annihilation Campaign.' And lots of Amestrian soldiers who did that are also helping restore Ishval, so it doesn't sound as bad to them as it would traditionally."
"But I did fight in the Annihilation Campaign," said Jean.
"That doesn't make you a murderer. It's not murder if a soldier kills another soldier in wartime," said Miles. "We should talk to the priest and tell him they can use 'ha'."
"But I didn't just kill other soldiers, Colonel. You said it yourself - it was an Annihilation Campaign. After Order 3066, most of us combat soldiers probably killed non-soldiers at some point, and everyone who was on cleanup did. What do you think we were 'cleaning up'? And I was on cleanup."