Not to toot my own horn, but my pun game is strong

Yes and no because there's not really a translation issue here, though I think there may be cultural divides, in that local leaders calling themselves Khalifa was more common further out from places like Damascus, Cairo, and Baghdad, more towards places like Tunis (and the Swahili coast, but that does present a question of language after all). But it is in that vein, yeah.

which meant leader after the original.

Ehhhh, unprecise. Julius Caesar just made his name a title. It didn't "mean" anything in the traditional sense.

Btw, in ancient Rome "Caesar" was very much pronounced like the German "Kaiser".

If you actually look for a word that comes close to "leader" you would have to stick to "imperator", which basically means "he who has the command", "commander", "he who may command other people" - "imperare" = "to command". Likewise "imperium" = that which the commander has command over. "Body of command" if you so will. In ancient Rome "imperator" wasn't a unique title either. Pretty much like we have multiple generals, each with their own armies Rome had multiple "imperators".

All that said "Caesar" wasn't the real title of the Roman Emperor either, it was "princeps" (= "first among equals", "prince" is derived from that too). And later on in the 3rd century it became "dominus" (related to domination, denoting a shift towards more autocracy, doing away with the senate).

Also the (unified) Roman Empires never called itself an empire, it always called itself a Roman Republic even though the rulers very much knew it was a ruse.

The Greek dominated Eastern Roman Empire called itself Basileia Rhomaion which literally translated would mean "Kingdom of Romans" or "Empire of Romans" - depending on how you see the title of "Basileus" (linguists and historians aren't 100% decided). That name was kept until 1453. They never called themselves Byzantines.

But Kaiser and Tsar are just the same word in different languages. It just became synonymous with rulers of specific countries in English.

You're quite right, I skipped that step in that formation and usage of the title. In all honesty, my assumption was that small time Khalifs were modeling themselves more after the large caliphates and thus assuming the title, rather than declaring themselves *the* Caliph, as in successor and steward of Islam, so I explained it as such.

Also, I hadn't put together the Salafi connection/etymology before, so thanks for the info.

Makes sense. Still, a very cool and very fun thing to do!

You know, I'm grasping this, but what I don't grasp is why the devs put SOKOTO as the secondary tag for Malian culture when Macina would have been the Mali region's equivalent Jihad state. (though ofc Macina has its own culture, still not sure why Sokoto is associated with Mali since it's so far west). If they're going on the Jihads being tied to the Fulani, why not attach it to Fulani culture or Hausa culture? Very confused.

I had assumed it was based on location rather than a secondary nation, based on once having tried to create banten but only succeeding in getting the separatists in banten province itself.