20 Little Known Star Wars Facts
18. What’s an Ewok?
In fact, the furry creatures are never once referred to as Ewoks during the entire movie that features them.
As George Lucas originally planned the third “Star Wars” film, he intended for the jungle scenes to take place on the Wookiee planet.
In developing the character of Chewbacca, however, he realized that he had made Wookiees too technologically competent for the sequence to make sense.
Instead, Lucas created a new species of short forest-dwellers to live on the moon of Endor. He modeled their image after the Shih Tzu dog breed and based their style of warfare on the Viet Cong guerrillas.
In both the script for “Return of the Jedi” and the movie’s closing credits, these characters are referred to as Ewoks. The species name is derived from the word “Miwok” – a Native American tribe.
Still, none of the characters in the film ever mention the word “Ewok.” Nor are any of the individual characters, such as Wicket and Paploo, ever called by their names. Instead, the Ewoks only speak their own language, which was created by sound designer Ben Burtt. “Ewokese” is derived from a Russian language called Kalmyk, and it also features phrases in Tibetan and Nepali.
