I'm actually not sure; I'm still learning Japanese, so I haven't been able to translate the few pages of the Ultimania that I actually have.

As to whether the developers meant it this way...Well, I'm not sure that they did, but it makes the setting more coherent for me to think of things like this, and so I do; I like to roleplay and write in the FF8 world, and that can be done better if the setting's fleshed out.