CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

I have a couple questions that I'd appreciate any fellow Clannad viewers to weigh in on. Maybe these questions are unanswerable, but maybe some of you have theories, at least.

First of all...why the heck is this anime named Clannad? What does Clannad even mean, and why is it the title? It's not a name included in the story. Am I completely missing something, or did they really just grab some random Western-sounding name and slap it onto this show?

Also, I love the side story that you get alongside the main one, with the girl and the robot. It's so quiet and mysterious, but seems to have such a weight of meaning too. According to the end of the anime, these characters are somehow Ushio and Tomoya, which is kind of cool, but it makes me wonder. Are they merely symbolically those characters? Is it a parallel universe where father and daughter are a girl and a robot instead? Are they reincarnations of Ushio and Tomoya? Or is it some kind of "afterlife" or something?

Any thoughts, people?

Clannad (kuranado, クラナド), was named, according to Wikipedia, due to a misunderstanding. 'The main theme is the value of having a family, as the title of the series implies because the main scenario writer Jun Maeda mistakenly thought the name of the Irish band Clannad meant "clan" or "family" in Irish.'

As I understand it SPOILER: Highlight text to read: the robot, and the entire Illusionary World, was created by Ushio in order to rectify the problems that occurred with Nagisa's death. The Garbage Robot is Tomoya -- though I'm guessing this is himself seen through his own eyes, not Ushio's -- and may reflect his utter powerlessness to stop all the bad things that happened in the first iteration, including his descent into alcoholism. Ushio is able to collect the orbs/lights needed to loop back to before Nagisa's demise and reset everything to a happier ending. So I'm guessing a sort of "parallel afterlife" where Ushio has powers not available to her in the real world.

So here's my belief on the robot/girl part SPOILER: Highlight text to read: Ushio says that it was because she loved her so much that he followed her to that place. As stated in Katomi's arc in this world there are other worlds. These worlds can't really be studied. I kind of look at it as when she dies she goes to one of these other worlds, and his love for her brings his spirit to the place that she is. At the end she says that the lights are everyones hopes/wishes at this time so she has to stay there in order to let everyone have hope. She promises that if he catches all of them a miracle will happen. I assume that though we don't see it Tomoya dedicates himself to that until he's gathered all of them then you see Nagisa actually live. hope this helped

BTW if you haven't already put Kanon down as an good option if you feel up to another in the style of Clannad. It was Key's (the people who made the clannad game) first game, it also has some of the same voice actors.

Thanks for the help, guys! That really does clear some things up. It's still a pretty wonky and deus ex machina ending, but better than I thought it was at first.