That's actually what made me think the expression Far Dareis Mai might be more accurately translated as something like "spear-wives-who-are-maidens" than strictly Maidens of the Spear, as it would fit the Aiel pattern of kin ties denominations. Actually, I think the name carries this meaning: Maidens who are wedded to the Spear. The Maidens make about as much fuss about being maidens wed to no man as they make about being wedded to the spear. An alternative is, of course, that Far Dareis Mai means in truth "spear-sisters" Maidens also use that name in the NT to refer to the society. I don't think we should necessarily take for granted Far Dareis Mai translated literally to the alternative names the Maidens use in the NT.

We have two names with "Far" and the other one includes a kinship. Along the same line as your "connection", but going a step further, I was thinking maybe "far" is not so much a proposition but a word that indicate a kin relationship. In other words, brother isn't just "Din" but "Far ... Din" when you specify who the person is brother to.

We know the language is subtle and complex and there are more than one way to say something. Using "far" seems not to be the exclusive grammatical way to compound "a connection" (kinship or not). The name lanfear doesn't use it, nor do the very similar expression (to Far Aldazar Din) "Treebrother"/"Brother to the trees" which is not Far Ala(t) Din, but Alatin. In this one, we have also an example of what I mentionned before about switching consonant in compounds according to rules we don't know about. It sounds likely the root words are alat and din, and in this case the "d" vanish.




This one is interesting, because it's an example of contraction of a root word within a compound word. If we look only at the root words, this should be calaldazar (cal=red, aldazar=eagle) but as we see, the repeated syllable is omitted when the two words are compounded.

As I said, the OT doesn't seem very intuitive to English or French speakers like us. It's a whole different sort of language. With the contractions, shifts, variations/levels, we can really go only so far in trying to puzzle it out.