Behind the name

Ask questions about the personality and backstory of the multitude of characters in the Suikoden series.
Shinyo
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Shinyo »

RVallant wrote:Believe it or not... Rugner used as slang means all manner of rude things but there we go.
Hehe, I wasn't sure about Geil's surname, but I think it was "Rugner", didn't know it had a meaning though.
Antimatzist wrote: Büchse: German for rifle
You forgot it can also mean "tin can" :P
Antimatzist wrote: Geschütz: German for gun (one of these names was written with "u" instead of "ü")
I think "gun" is not a good translation here.. I would rather say "turret" or "piece of artillery".

Thanks for mentioning those guys, I totally forgot I played Tierkreis (which means "Zodiac" in german, btw). Maybe I forgot because it was a pretty crappy game for Suikoden (I mean it wasn't really THAT bad, but I was pretty disappointed because it's not as good as the others).


Thanks for the extra info and correction, Vextor, I didn't know Fuma was a famous ninja aswell :D
My translation of "Genkaku" was taken from the most recent episode of Fairy Tail - Natsu, one of the main characters, attacked his enemy shouting "Genkaku" and it was translated as "Sword edge". I thought I read that somewhere else aswell, but I wasn't sure.
About Mondo: the name does sound like it might be japanese, so I tried google translator, but it just showed me the italian translation :D
And about Riou.. well... in my mind it sounds like "Ryu" :P
If you know how it should sound, please tell me.

By the way, does anybody know if "Yuber" has a special meaning? Since we already know what Pesmerga means, and because I am very curious about those 2 guys.
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Hirathien
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Hirathien »

If you remove Y his name is Uber! Which means well, ya know.

Farfetched, but so is everything.
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Raww Le Klueze
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Raww Le Klueze »

By the way, does anybody know if "Yuber" has a special meaning?
Shade
Doctorum Non Urina Singulus.
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Antimatzist »

@Shinyo: Yeayeah, Büchse means tin can too, but not in the military sense ;) And I looked ab at leo.org for a good translation of Geschütz, artillery might be better than gun, you're right.

The "canon" name of the hero, Sieg, also means "Victory" in german.
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Vextor
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Vextor »

Shinyo wrote:[
About Mondo: the name does sound like it might be japanese, so I tried google translator, but it just showed me the italian translation :D
And about Riou.. well... in my mind it sounds like "Ryu" :P
If you know how it should sound, please tell me.
If you search for "Mondo" in google using roman letters, you'll naturally get the Italian meaning.
However, if you search for the same name in Japanese, you'd get something completely different.
When you're looking up meanings for names, you'll have to look into it's linguistic background or you can end up with an error.
This is particularly the case when you're dealing with a translated product, because the same name can easily be
romanized differently, such as as "Mondoh."

In terms of Riou, "Ryu" is a one-syllable name, while Riou would be two syllables-- pronouncing the "ri" and "ou" separately.
Sort of like "Ree-Oh"
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Rooks
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Rooks »

Georg -- This is not a misspelling. It is a German variant of the name, and considering the origins of English, probably the primary spelling. For example, there is the World War I era poet, Georg Trakl. The translator of the game probably thought that "George" was too boring.

Clive -- Well, yeah it can mean cliff I guess, but it is simply more of the root word for cliff. Remember, Old English words pronounce each vowel, and the spellings and alphabet have been modernized here. It is more likely to be a verb meaning: "To break/split apart." That is "to Cleave." Other related words are: Climb and Cliff, but at least by middle english the word "Cliff" had no vowel on the end, meaning that "Cleve," as it was spelled, is probably closer, and the fact that both are pronounced almost exactly the same.

How much work do the makers of the game put into the names? Hard to say, but certainly a few characters are named after real-world people. I heard somewhere that Crowley was named for "Aleister Crowley." But who knows how much Mr. Murayama knew about Crowley? Did he read a long bio, or just somehow heard mention of him as a western magician. It is possible that Georg is named for Georg Trakl, if all one knows of Trakl is that he was a Poet and soldier who would sit on the battlefield after the end of a battle and write his poetry there. (This is a legend about him and probably isn't true) But if you dig deeper into Trakl's life you find that he was a conscript, forced to fight a war that he did not believe in, refused to fire his rifle in combat, and chose to commit suicide before the war ended. This sounds a bit less like the Georg from Suikoden.
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Vextor
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Vextor »

Gerog should never be "George" because his name in Japanese can only be pronounced as "Georg," and could never possibly be pronounced as George.

And I think Murayama had a lot of random knowledge stuffed in his head. Not only did he include Crowley, but he also included Mathers, who was the real-world mentor of Aleister Crowley (the NA translation translated Mathers' name to "Mazus" though).
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Rooks
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Rooks »

Interesting. Yeah I don't read Japanese unfortunately, so thanks for pointing that out.

I always thought Mazus was a weird name, now it makes sense to me. If he knew about Mathers, then he probably knew quite a bit about Crowley himself, more than what can just be learned from the Black Sabbath song haha.

Oddly, I cannot see many similarities between Crowley the man and Crowley the Suikoden character though. I mean, there is no doubt that Aleister Crowley was a smart guy, but to me it seemed like he spent most of his efforts on these juvenile "Magik" pursuits. He was a good writer and social critic, he even might have been the next Oscar Wilde if he'd concentrated more on that. But really, I can't say I'm a fan of Crowley.

Suikoden's Crowley was a scholar and intellectual, who rejected the power of the True Runes. I just don't see many similarities there.
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Antimatzist »

Both were somehow into occult practices, so it makes sense somehow.

Some citiy names have meaning too, like the names Milich "invented" (Bier blanche: white beer, Premier l'amour: first love, lac virginité: Lake Virginity)

Crom might come from the element chromium. Crom is also Conan's god, but I doubt that it comes from the books/movies :D
Shinyo
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Shinyo »

Raww Le Klueze wrote:
By the way, does anybody know if "Yuber" has a special meaning?
Shade
Thank you, do you know what language it is from?
(Btw, shortly after I asked about the meaning, I found a post by you in a different thread where you said it's "Shade" :D)
Chaco wrote:
what, no Shtoltenhiem Reinbach? (pardon the spelling)
The site I got all the name meanings from had ntohing for that name, unless I spelled it wrong to?
It is a bit wrong.. i think i twas "Shtolteheim Reinbach" though it is still incorrect, as it should be "Schtolte(n)heim Reinbach", which is a german sounding name. You could translate "Reinbach" as something like pure/clean brook or creek. Also "Reinbach" is a river in "South Tyrol" in italy.
Schtolteheim, however, does not have a meaning afaik, it just sounds german :P
Correct me, if you find a meaning for this name.
Vextor wrote:
Shinyo wrote:[
About Mondo: the name does sound like it might be japanese, so I tried google translator, but it just showed me the italian translation :D
And about Riou.. well... in my mind it sounds like "Ryu" :P
If you know how it should sound, please tell me.
If you search for "Mondo" in google using roman letters, you'll naturally get the Italian meaning.
However, if you search for the same name in Japanese, you'd get something completely different.
When you're looking up meanings for names, you'll have to look into it's linguistic background or you can end up with an error.
This is particularly the case when you're dealing with a translated product, because the same name can easily be
romanized differently, such as as "Mondoh."
Well, I can't read/write japanese, so my only option would be to translate "Mondo" into japanese, to get the japanese version and then translate it.. but this might end up in another error..
And i know what you mean with romanizing words that can be written differently, because it's the same with kyrillic, but I didn't even think about this for some reason, hehe..
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Antimatzist »

Schtolteheim is definitely not a German word, but "heim" means home and is a suffix for towns. I found two similar Words: Schlotheim, which is a village in Germany, and Otto Schlottenheim, who was a mayor during the NS Regime and, well, also part of the NSDAP. I doubt Reinbach is named after either. ;)

But it's really amazing how many surnames sound german or jewish Andarcs surname, Bergman, translates to "mountain man" (correctly in German it would be Bergmann, which is also the translation of miner), Silverberg to "silver mountain"(correctly in German it would be Silberberg). Vingerhut, Snowes surname, means thimble (correctly in German it would be Fingerhut).

Roland's surname, Lazarus, comes from the biblic persons. I don't see a connection, though.

Louis surname, Keeferson, sounds a bit like "Kieferson" in German. "Kiefer" is the German name for pine.

Also, Augustine's surname, nabor, might be an anagramm for "baron", but that's mere speculation (as is most of this post^^)
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Vextor
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Vextor »

Keep in mind most of these names written in Roman letters were translated from phonetic Japanese, and thus the intent may have been last names to be like "Kieferson." However, whether that sort of thing gets translated properly is up to the skill of the translators.
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Antimatzist »

Vextor wrote:Keep in mind most of these names written in Roman letters were translated from phonetic Japanese, and thus the intent may have been last names to be like "Kieferson." However, whether that sort of thing gets translated properly is up to the skill of the translators.
I guess you're right, "Kieferson" would have been pronounced quite differently in English (well, it is pronounced "Keeferson", so it is kinda the same.)
Shinyo
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Shinyo »

Antimatzist wrote: Louis surname, Keeferson, sounds a bit like "Kieferson" in German. "Kiefer" is the German name for pine.
You forgot that it can also be "jaw" :P

And yeah, I know Shtolteheim is not a german word, but it sounds german :D
and -heim is usually german, but it's also used in other RPGs aswell for towns and villages (Nibelheim in FF7, for example)

Oh, and Kieferson would rather be... uh.. I think it's swedish? Because -son is a popular suffix used over there and means "son of...". So for example it would be "son of Kiefer".
Maybe it was a different country, not sure, hehe..

Btw, I found Schlotheim, too, but I thought "Nah, that's pretty far fetched and not really worth mentioning" :P
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Hirathien
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Re: Behind the name

Post by Hirathien »

I have never ever seen a Swedish person have Kiefer in their name. Or Kief. You'd have to look at our less fortunate neighboring countries, maybe those would have that name. But we have our standards!
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