Choose Your Legends Round 6 Discussion Thread!

[Ice Dragon]

21 minutes ago, Jotari said:

So can Americans innately pronunce Iuchar and Iuchabra then? I also know for a fact that the voice actors are mispronouncing half the Irish names they've went with. And hell Heroes is really fond of straight up giving us characters (as in letters) I have no idea how I'm meant to pronounce because they're like old Norse or something. You're probably not wrong in your summation, but that they did it to make things easier to pronounce is probably not true. It's more likely they did it just to further mystify their internal logic. Like why in the world did they call the tome Forseti and the character Ced? Surely that was meant to be a very obvious connection between the characters (and Seti is a name, albeit an Egyptian one which is a bit out of left field for Jugdral). Ced is such a weird unname name that when I google it google literally asks me if I meant "Ced Fire Emblem" before displaying a bunch of acronyms. Though googling Ced name does reveal that it is a name, in so far as it's just a shortened form of Cedric.

There's such a stark contrast between the name localization styles for Awakening-Fates-Echoes compared to Genealogy-Thracia-Heroes that you might be able to convince me that they were done by different localization teams altogether, but there seems to be a simpler explanation for the difference in style and it's something that you touched on. The names of characters in Jugdral and Heroes are overwhelmingly inspired by mythology rather than using everyday names (or words or gibberish), which is not the case for other games in the series, and it looks like they're trying to preserve those references to mythology... but perhaps a bit too hard.

The localization team's "allergy" to "difficult" names is most easily seen with the French names in Awakening and the Japanese names in Fates. In Awakening, almost every playable character with a name deriving from French (Soiree, Sort, Denis, Eudes, Azur, Chambray) had their name changed (Sully, Stahl, Donnel, Owain, Inigo, Yarne, respectively), leaving only a few French names remaining. In Fates, every playable character with a Japanese name longer than three syllables other than Yukimura and a large number of characters with three-syllable-long names (Suzukaze, Asyura, Mozume, Midoriko, Kazahana, Tsukuyomi, Yuugiri, Nishiki, Shinonome, Kisaragi) had their names shortened or changed (Kaze, Shura, Mozu, Midori, Hana, Hayato, Reina, Kaden, Shiro, Kiragi), and Tsubaki's name was changed to "Subaki" to avoid a syllable-initial "ts", which is confusing and/or difficult to pronounce for many American English speakers.

 

On the topic of Iuchar and Iucharba,

7 hours ago, Jotari said:

*I thought it was Luchar and Lucharba localized, but those are Is and not Ls...usually I notice that mistake where others don't, but this one slipped by me because how in the hell are you meant to pronounce those two names? I have checked, and there are no real words in English that begin with iu. The closest is an archaic form of the word Justice.

"Iuchar" is Scottish Gaelic for "July". No idea what a "Iucharba" is, though.

But I have no idea why they went with that when his name in Japanese is "Johan", which is perfectly normal name (short for "Johannes" in various Germanic languages and equivalent to English "John"). But once again, no idea what a "Johalva" is.

Then again, I feel like they also have a weird aversion to normal names sometimes.

 

23 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Another point on Gaiden Barth is that calling him that in particular gives us a weird dichotomy in which a tonne of the bosses have name ending in 'th'. Barth, Dolth, Greith, Garth, there's even a Jarth in the DLC. I don't know what all those characters are called in the Japanese (Barth and Garth at least are probably meant to be similar) but there's so many of them on indistinguishable pirate and bandit characters (plus Dolth which is like an English word for an idiot) that I'm half convinced it's some kind of joke. They could have went with Gart and Dart to make it sound less like Vader, though we already have a Dart in the series so it wouldn't have avoided the duplicate name issue on that front (though as whenever conversation trends towards names, I just have to commend the series for having so many characters with only a handful of repeating names. Had I been heading the series I probably would have given the first three bosses of each game the same name as the first three bosses in Shadow Dragon as soon as Binding Blade established itself as something of a soft reboot ripping off Archanea).

Barth, Garth, and Jarth all follow the same naming scheme in Japanese, being ダッハ (dahha, "Dach"), ガッハ (gahha, "Gach"), and ジャッハ (jahha, "Jach"), all three being Polish surnames.

Greith is ギース (gīsu, "Geese"), which is identical to Binding Blade's Geese.

Dolth is ドルク (doruku). Possibly "Dolk" or "Dolch", meaning "dagger" in various Germanic languages. Or it could be "Dork".

[Jotari]

41 minutes ago, Mercakete said:

There may be where we disagree, probably by how we measure it. The main focus of this game has always been the story, even though these things are also true: you can play the game without even touching the story, you don't need to progress much in the story to summon units, you can play other modes, and there are a lot of other modes. That's still not what the game itself (the entity of FEH, not the gameplay) focuses on. The game itself is organized by what's going on in the story, meeting Alfonse, Sharena, and Anna is unavoidable, banners follow the story (not only do the units on regular banners appear in the main story as enemies, but characters introduced in the story appear in banners as the story progresses, such as the "rule" of "once a character (such as Surtr, Thrasir, or Otr) dies, that character will become summonable"), and all other modes keep pointing back to the main story. Even how you get heroes is tied directly to the contents of the story (that is, the summoner being, well, the summoner.) Plus, all the main advertising we see happens at the beginning and end of the books, and are all about the story.

It could be, by the way, that I'm not explaining this very well, so disclaimer there, but if this game wasn't story-driven, then we'd just have battle maps with no linear progression in the plot at all. However, there is definitely a timespan between books 1 and 6, and characters grow and develop during that time, not to mention the meeting and inclusion of new characters (like how Fjorm and Peony appeared in Book 5.)

It's not though. The thrust of the game's incentive is the summoning aspect. The story exists but it is not the most developed, most played or most focused on aspect of the game. In fact I'd go as far as to say it'd be difficult to make a game that is less focused on its story while still actually having a proper story.

[Florete]

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

*Hector and Eliwood aren't on the Binding Blade list, which I find a bit surprising. Were they on the list in the first CYL and are removed now because of the previous winner thing? None of the other Elibe characters have their votes shared though, so it seems reasonable old Hector and Eliwood could still be there. Though I guess if they won again it would be a bit grating even though I want Bearded Hector in the game (totally should have been what Valentine's Hector was). EDIT Looking at the home page it does indeed mention Hector (Binding Blade) and Eliwood (Binding Blade) as characters you cannot vote for.

This is something that has really bothered me. The two Eliwoods were not combined, but both were removed after he won in year 3 (this is year vote combining began). A similar thing happened with Edelgard; Flame Emperor was still voteable last year for an unknown reason, but is no longer voteable this year (Does this mean that either Gatekeeper or Marianne is actually the Flame Emperor!?).

This means that the 'same' character can be removed from voting even though their votes aren't combined, which not only feels unfair (especially for me as an Anna fan), but technically has the potential to result in one character taking multiple winning slots in the same year if fans can rally behind them enough, and would only be possible that one time.

Any entries that would be removed as a result of a separate entry winning should have their votes tallied together.

[Jotari]

6 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

There's such a stark contrast between the name localization styles for Awakening-Fates-Echoes compared to Genealogy-Thracia-Heroes that you might be able to convince me that they were done by different localization teams altogether, but there seems to be a simpler explanation for the difference in style and it's something that you touched on. The names of characters in Jugdral and Heroes are overwhelmingly inspired by mythology rather than using everyday names (or words or gibberish), which is not the case for other games in the series, and it looks like they're trying to preserve those references to mythology... but perhaps a bit too hard.

The localization team's "allergy" to "difficult" names is most easily seen with the French names in Awakening and the Japanese names in Fates. In Awakening, almost every playable character with a name deriving from French (Soiree, Sort, Denis, Eudes, Azur, Chambray) had their name changed (Sully, Stahl, Donnel, Owain, Inigo, Yarne, respectively), leaving only a few French names remaining. In Fates, every playable character with a Japanese name longer than three syllables other than Yukimura and a large number of characters with three-syllable-long names (Suzukaze, Asyura, Mozume, Midoriko, Kazahana, Tsukuyomi, Yuugiri, Nishiki, Shinonome, Kisaragi) had their names shortened or changed (Kaze, Shura, Mozu, Midori, Hana, Hayato, Reina, Kaden, Shiro, Kiragi), and Tsubaki's name was changed to "Subaki" to avoid a syllable-initial "ts", which is confusing and/or difficult to pronounce for many American English speakers.

Huh, I didn't know they'd actually altered the Japanese names in Fates so much. They all seem appropriately Japanese by the end. Though Japanese name scheme is so formulaic you can turn basically anything into a name that sounds appropriately Japanese. Still I would have thought they would have taken that as an excuse to just not bother to localize them and present them as is. Although, given the length of some of those names, shortening might actually be less down to localising them to a foreign audience and might actually have more to do with fitting the names onto things like status screens.

4 minutes ago, Florete said:

This is something that has really bothered me. The two Eliwoods were not combined, but both were removed after he won in year 3 (this is year vote combining began). A similar thing happened with Edelgard; Flame Emperor was still voteable last year for an unknown reason, but is no longer voteable this year (Does this mean that either Gatekeeper or Marianne is actually the Flame Emperor!?).

This means that the 'same' character can be removed from voting even though their votes aren't combined, which not only feels unfair (especially for me as an Anna fan), but technically has the potential to result in one character taking multiple winning slots in the same year if fans can rally behind them enough, and would only be possible that one time.

Any entries that would be removed as a result of a separate entry winning should have their votes tallied together.

We must rally adult and young Tiki to win the 1st and 2nd place simultaneously just to give them this exact headache! XD Or, better yet, Young Tiki and TMS Tiki.

Edited January 21 by Jotari

[Acacia Sgt]

21 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

On the topic of Iuchar and Iucharba,

"Iuchar" is Scottish Gaelic for "July". No idea what a "Iucharba" is, though.

But I have no idea why they went with that when his name in Japanese is "Johan", which is perfectly normal name (short for "Johannes" in various Germanic languages and equivalent to English "John"). But once again, no idea what a "Johalva" is.

Then again, I feel like they also have a weird aversion to normal names sometimes.

Probably a "correction," as it were.

In Irish Mythology, Dannan/Dannand is the mother of three: Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba. The translation team likely saw Dannan and Brian, and thought to change Johan and Johalva to match.

Edited January 21 by Acacia Sgt

[Mercakete]

17 minutes ago, Jotari said:

It's not though. The thrust of the game's incentive is the summoning aspect. The story exists but it is not the most developed, most played or most focused on aspect of the game. In fact I'd go as far as to say it'd be difficult to make a game that is less focused on its story while still actually having a proper story.

I'm not talking about what the players focus on, to be clear. I'm talking about what the game (or developers) focuses on. The other modes and stuff is sort of "here; try this while we continue writing the story." As I explained, everything points back to the main story, from summonable units native to the game following the story to Forging Bonds conversations including characters from the main story up to the latest that has been released. And, again, the major trailers (as opposed to individual banner adverts, but even those have a different intro depending on which book they're in) and cutscenes are all totally focused on the main story (even the original trailer, where Alfonse, Sharena, the summoner, and Veronica are introduced (and maybe Anna, but I don't remember if she was there or not.)) such as Eitri's rant, the mid-book trailer in Book 4, etc.

[Jotari]

7 minutes ago, Mercakete said:

I'm not talking about what the players focus on, to be clear. I'm talking about what the game (or developers) focuses on. The other modes and stuff is sort of "here; try this while we continue writing the story." As I explained, everything points back to the main story, from summonable units native to the game following the story to Forging Bonds conversations including characters from the main story up to the latest that has been released. And, again, the major trailers (as opposed to individual banner adverts, but even those have a different intro depending on which book they're in) and cutscenes are all totally focused on the main story (even the original trailer, where Alfonse, Sharena, the summoner, and Veronica are introduced (and maybe Anna, but I don't remember if she was there or not.)) such as Eitri's rant, the mid-book trailer in Book 4, etc.

Yes, that's what I'm talking about too. The developers of the game obviously put way more effort into every other aspect of the game.

[GrandeRampel]

17 minutes ago, Jotari said:

It's not though. The thrust of the game's incentive is the summoning aspect. The story exists but it is not the most developed, most played or most focused on aspect of the game. In fact I'd go as far as to say it'd be difficult to make a game that is less focused on its story while still actually having a proper story.

I find what you said confusing. The game incentive is the summoning aspect? But if you were only able to summon without other modes to play (such as the story mode) nobody would keep "playing" this game just to collect pngs and equip some accessories or something. What you said sound to me like somebody saying that the incentive of a FE game is to be able to move the units around on a grid. Like... while technically correct being able to move units around on a grid would be pointless if there was no story progression, and summoning new heroes would be pointless without a story mode to use them in.

And the "story" doesn't only mean story mode. Forging Bonds is a mode with some story in it. Same with Tempest Trials, Hero Battles, even Grand Conquest technically in a minimal way. Even Mjolnir's Strike and Aether Raids/Resort technically have a story even if the story is there only to give context to what happens (hey, Thorr will keep attacking every week to test our strenght, hey we found this floating island. It would a bitchin' place for a resort).

There are some modes with no story whatsoever like Summoner Duels and Arena. And maybe some people would consider them the main point of the game. But others ignore them entirely.

[Jotari]

6 minutes ago, GrandeRampel said:

I find what you said confusing. The game incentive is the summoning aspect? But if you were only able to summon without other modes to play (such as the story mode) nobody would keep "playing" this game just to collect pngs and equip some accessories or something. What you said sound to me like somebody saying that the incentive of a FE game is to be able to move the units around on a grid. Like... while technically correct being able to move units around on a grid would be pointless if there was no story progression, and summoning new heroes would be pointless without a story mode to use them in.

And the "story" doesn't only mean story mode. Forging Bonds is a mode with some story in it. Same with Tempest Trials, Hero Battles, even Grand Conquest technically in a minimal way. Even Mjolnir's Strike and Aether Raids/Resort technically have a story even if the story is there only to give context to what happens (hey, Thorr will keep attacking every week to test our strenght, hey we found this floating island. It would a bitchin' place for a resort).

There are some modes with no story whatsoever like Summoner Duels and Arena. And maybe some people would consider them the main point of the game. But others ignore them entirely.

By that I mean the main focus of the developers is designing new characters to fit into the game and researching the best methods they can use to encourage people to buy them. That is where they make their money. The story exists, but it is a minor aspect of the game compared to creating new characters and skills to summon. The fact that the story exists for multiple game modes doesn't mean any effort is put into furthering story there. Correct me if I'm wrong but not a single line of dialogue or prose has been written for Mjolnir Strike since it was introduced. They are not putting effort into creating a story there.  Nor are they for Aether Raids. They do have a bit of focus on story in Tempest Trials, a markedly increase recently with Fjorm's little personal story (but even then, that was done to further the summoning aspects by introducing new characters and forms to sell to the playerbase, the story supports the summoning, not vice versa). By far the most story content in the game goes into Forging Bonds, I'd even argue more effort goes into forging bonds than the actual main story. It certainly feels like it has more dialogue a month to month basis. But again, the whole point of Forging Bonds is to incentivize you to try and summon new units.

This getting rather off topic, I think I'm going to say we should move it to a new thread if anyone wants to discuss it further.

Edited January 21 by Jotari

[Ice Dragon]

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Huh, I didn't know they'd actually altered the Japanese names in Fates so much. They all seem appropriately Japanese by the end. Though Japanese name scheme is so formulaic you can turn basically anything into a name that sounds appropriately Japanese. Still I would have thought they would have taken that as an excuse to just not bother to localize them and present them as is. Although, given the length of some of those names, shortening might actually be less down to localising them to a foreign audience and might actually have more to do with fitting the names onto things like status screens.

Kumagera's name was left intact despite being only half a letter shorter than "Shinonome" or "Tsukuyomi" when accounting for character width, and all of the other four-syllable-long names mentioned take up less space than Kumagera's, so I don't really think physical length was an issue. It's worth noting that Sumeragi's and Kumagera's names are unchanged despite being four syllables in length, likely because they aren't standard playable characters (though Kumagera can be captured) and therefore ease of pronunciation and memory is less important.

 

And because I forgot to mention them, there are also two playable characters in Fates with French names that also had their names changed. "Benoit" was changed to "Benny" and "Eponine" was changed to "Nina". Additionally, the capturable boss "Dragée" was changed to "Candace".

 

3 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Probably a "correction," as it were.

In Irish Mythology, Dannan/Dannand is the mother of three: Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba. The translation team likely saw Dannan and Brian, and thought to change Johan and Johalvier to match.

Right. I'm an idiot. I literally said that Jugdral pulls a crap-ton from mythology right before that, too. (Well, maybe not right before that, but close enough.)

[Morgan--Grandmaster]

3 hours ago, NSSKG151 said:

Yesterday I gave my obligatory vote to Awakening Anna. Today I decided to vote for Awakening Tiki since it looks like she might actually have a chance at top 2 (and a brave dragon would be neat to see). For my main account I plan to dedicate a vote to Linde, Chrom, Felix, Ingrid and Hilda since I decided to do something different this year. For my two other Nintendo accounts though I plan to spread my votes out for Tiki, Chrom, Felix and Hilda since they are all in the top 8 right now.

Your what?

[Jotari]

 

39 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

And because I forgot to mention them, there are also two playable characters in Fates with French names that also had their names changed. "Benoit" was changed to "Benny" and "Eponine" was changed to "Nina". Additionally, the capturable boss "Dragée" was changed to "Candace".

Clearly Tree House just hates the French. Also I just quickly checked and the Awakening and Fates names are virtually unchanged between English and other European languages. Meaning France itself missed out on all those names actually appreciating their (much self lauded) culture because they translated the game from English instead of Japanese.

1 hour ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Probably a "correction," as it were.

In Irish Mythology, Dannan/Dannand is the mother of three: Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba. The translation team likely saw Dannan and Brian, and thought to change Johan and Johalva to match.

Quote

 

Right. I'm an idiot. I literally said that Jugdral pulls a crap-ton from mythology right before that, too. (Well, maybe not right before that, but close enough.)

Calling yourself an idiot is uncharitable. I'm Irish and that reference went right over my head. That explains the why of it, now I need to rack my brains for Irish words that can explain to me how it's pronounced (Io is much more common than Iu in Irish I know, at least). At least I know it's definitely a hard 'ch' now.  If we're throwing around labels of idiot, I thought the two of them had an L instead of an I, meaning their name sounded something like a one of those Mexican wrestlers.

 

Edited January 21 by Jotari

[Mercakete]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Yes, that's what I'm talking about too. The developers of the game obviously put way more effort into every other aspect of the game.

Though I disagree, I think that we've explained our points well enough and that it's just a matter of difference in perspective at this point. Nothing wrong with it, and it's actually a good thing, since it means different people can bring different points of view in order to better whatever whole. Thanks for the discourse. 🙂

1 hour ago, GrandeRampel said:

And the "story" doesn't only mean story mode. Forging Bonds is a mode with some story in it. Same with Tempest Trials, Hero Battles, even Grand Conquest technically in a minimal way. Even Mjolnir's Strike and Aether Raids/Resort technically have a story even if the story is there only to give context to what happens (hey, Thorr will keep attacking every week to test our strenght, hey we found this floating island. It would a bitchin' place for a resort).

There are some modes with no story whatsoever like Summoner Duels and Arena. And maybe some people would consider them the main point of the game. But others ignore them entirely.

While other modes exist with story, I was talking about the main story specifically, since everything else is an aside, just to be perfectly clear. To me, bulk doesn't indicate what is "main" as much as focus does, and all the modes point to the linear progression of the main story, which is also where all the world-changing things happen, and what all the major trailers/cutscenes take place (outside of that one weird one-off of Fjorm singing, but even that had directly to do with Book 2's main story.)

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

This getting rather off topic, I think I'm going to say we should move it to a new thread if anyone wants to discuss it further.

Yeah, I was going to suggest that, too: that we should draw this to a close or create another thread, but personally I think it landed rather nicely on an "agree to disagree."

[Hilda]

Interesring. Ill wait on midterm results. If there is a meme char in top10 ima go for that, otherwise i guess its gonna be Azura

[King Marth 64]

33 minutes ago, Hilda said:

Interesring. Ill wait on midterm results. If there is a meme char in top10 ima go for that, otherwise i guess its gonna be Azura

Do you mean like wait to vote till the mid votes show up? You can vote 7 slots in 7 days in CYL Polls.

 

By the way, I managed to vote Lilina and Bernadetta in my other My Nintendo Accounts for placing on the missing two days that I missed out.

[Alexmender]

Day 3: Post TS Leonie. Being at the mercy of RNG can hurt sometimes, because I didn't like Leonie and her Jeralt obsession when I played 3H. But I decided to go all in for RNG choices until midterms, so I'll stick with that even if it chooses characters I'd never vote for.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Well, they haven't put out any update to the Top 8 standings, at least not yet. I guess it won't be a daily thing. But I think that's good! Midterms aren't far, anyway.

[zuibangde]

Hoping for an Azura win just to see the salt from reddit. 

[vikingsfan92]

Only three houses character I personally want to win is female Byleth. The rest of the cast both male and female I personally don't get excited about as brave heroes.  Other alts sure go ahead but don't know what is just don't see them as brave other than male Byleth simply because he is a version of Byleth.

So far I have gone all in on Elincia and probably will continue to do so but might be persuaded by midterms to help out Azura, female robin or corrin\

As for the  guys side not voting there ever but Chrom is the only one I would want out of the list. The rest are what ever to me

Edited January 22 by vikingsfan92

[Magenta Fantasies]

17 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

There's such a stark contrast between the name localization styles for Awakening-Fates-Echoes compared to Genealogy-Thracia-Heroes that you might be able to convince me that they were done by different localization teams altogether, but there seems to be a simpler explanation for the difference in style and it's something that you touched on. The names of characters in Jugdral and Heroes are overwhelmingly inspired by mythology rather than using everyday names (or words or gibberish), which is not the case for other games in the series, and it looks like they're trying to preserve those references to mythology... but perhaps a bit too hard.

The localization team's "allergy" to "difficult" names is most easily seen with the French names in Awakening and the Japanese names in Fates. In Awakening, almost every playable character with a name deriving from French (Soiree, Sort, Denis, Eudes, Azur, Chambray) had their name changed (Sully, Stahl, Donnel, Owain, Inigo, Yarne, respectively), leaving only a few French names remaining. In Fates, every playable character with a Japanese name longer than three syllables other than Yukimura and a large number of characters with three-syllable-long names (Suzukaze, Asyura, Mozume, Midoriko, Kazahana, Tsukuyomi, Yuugiri, Nishiki, Shinonome, Kisaragi) had their names shortened or changed (Kaze, Shura, Mozu, Midori, Hana, Hayato, Reina, Kaden, Shiro, Kiragi), and Tsubaki's name was changed to "Subaki" to avoid a syllable-initial "ts", which is confusing and/or difficult to pronounce for many American English speakers.

Vaike, Kjelle, Arete and Azura say hi. I thought Vaike was pronounced “VAI-kee” (rhyming with Nike) until he said his name in a battle quote. I’m still not sure how to properly pronounce Kjelle (I say it as it looks, “kuh-JELL.”) I think Arete is three syllables (ARR-ett-ay) and I’ve heard several different pronunciations of Azura depending on the voice actor (each Corrin VA pronounces her name differently. I say “uh-ZURR-uh.”)

I’m ambivalent about both sets of localization name changes. Some names are absolute improvements, like Sully (I like the name Soiree, but just doesn’t fit her character,) Xander, Laslow, Niles, Iago and the “Ll” bandits. Poor Jakob was called Joker in the Japanese version! No wonder he has a chip on his shoulder.

Others I didn’t like at all. I don’t mind Kaze instead of Suzukaze, but I’m annoyed by Reina and Hana, which are also names in Spanish and German respectively. Kaden and Selkie don’t fit Hoshido’s Japanese theme; I don’t see why they couldn’t have been Nishiki and Kinu. Also, a selkie is a creature from European mythology. On that note, I dislike that they removed the fabric-themed naming of the beast stone users (Velvet and Flannel are better names than Panne and Keaton.)

Shura (who I just voted for a little earlier, and I’m going to use this as a shameless advertisement to vote for him) is an odd case. From what I’ve read, it comes from Japanese Buddhist mythology and can be translated as Asyura, Ashura, Asura or Shura. Either way, I see why they went with Shura because the others are awfully close to Azura. In the same vein, I’ve read “kitsune” (in addition to just meaning “fox”) is more commonly used in Japanese to refer to the mythical shapeshifters than “youko/yoko.”

I didn’t realize Awakening had that many French names. It is bizarre that they’d be changed, as I don’t think those are difficult to pronounce at all (though I speak French as a second language, I’m a little rusty.)

Edited January 22 by Magenta Fantasies

[Lemmy]

Day 1 Ranulf

Day 2 Felicia

Day 3 Lute

Not sure who I'm voting for next

[Yexin]

today my vote went to Almedha, and a friend of mine also helped my cause by voting for her once

unless they show the midterm results tomorrow, and they make me change my mind, i think i'll give both Soren and Almedha 2 votes each

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Magenta Fantasies said:

Vaike, Kjelle, Arete and Azura say hi. I thought Vaike was pronounced “VAI-kee” (rhyming with Nike) until he said his name in a battle quote. I’m still not sure how to properly pronounce Kjelle (I say it as it looks, “kuh-JELL.”) I think Arete is three syllables (ARR-ett-ay) and I’ve heard several different pronunciations of Azura depending on the voice actor (each Corrin VA pronounces her name differently. I say “uh-ZURR-uh.”)

I thought Arete was a pretty uncomplicated two syllable "A-ret". Fortunately Arete is an actual word so one can look up a pronunciation guide and...

It says both two syllables and three syllables.... *face palm* It's also making more of a "route" sound there instead of a "ret" sound. Screw it, I'm just going to keep calling her "A-ret".

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I’m ambivalent about both sets of localization name changes. Some names are absolute improvements, like Sully (I like the name Soiree, but just doesn’t fit her character,) Xander, Laslow, Niles, Iago and the “Ll” bandits. Poor Jakob was called Joker in the Japanese version! No wonder he has a chip on his shoulder.

In what way was Iago a good change? Macbeth is already a very recognizble name in English, I dare say even more so than Iago. They just randomly changed it from one Shakespeare villain to another (I was about to clarify that Macbeth still is a villain, just one we follow, but, coming to think of it, Iago is actually kind of the protagonist of Othello in its first half. Though I could also sort of say that for Lady Macbeth in Macbeth). And they kind of wasted possibly the best villain in literary history on Garon's simp. Chances are in a few years time the Japanese folks will end up pulling out the grand list of names they haven't used yet and actually call someone Iago, and then we'll end up in an Alondite-Ettard situation where their insistence on randomly changing things that are already from English(ish) lore just causes unnecessary problems.

One change I have to praise though is Anankos. Hydra would have worked for English in terms of pronunciation, but where as it'd probably be exotic for Japanese, it's a bit plain for English (and obviously not enough heads). Anankos apparently comes form a Greek word which means divine will, need and inflicting pain. Which is so ridiculously appropriate. And it also keeps the Greek naming scheme the other Valla characters have (except the random exception of Mikoto because they obviously didn't have this all planned from the start). That was a really well thought out change by someone who was really paying attention.

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Others I didn’t like at all. I don’t mind Kaze instead of Suzukaze, but I’m annoyed by Reina and Hana, which are also names in Spanish and German respectively. Kaden and Selkie don’t fit Hoshido’s Japanese theme; I don’t see why they couldn’t have been Nishiki and Kinu. Also, a selkie is a creature from European mythology. On that note, I dislike that they removed the fabric-themed naming of the beast stone users (Velvet and Flannel are better names than Panne and Keaton.)

They actually did keep the fabric theming in Awakening. Panne is just  away more obscure term than Velvet, so much so my spell checker doesn't even recognize it when writing right now. And Yarne is kind of obvious. So I reckon they did want to keep it, but much like how I said Hyrda would be a bit boring for European audiences while it'd be exotic for Japanese, they wanted to make it less obvious.Though I think Velvet still would have absolutely worked. In either case it's not like they just didn't notice or disagreed. They went to some extra effort to (somewhat pointlessly) change it in Awakening, but change it to something that's a different form of the same thing, and then just abandoned it in Fates despite the theming continuing in Japanese. Well actually that's not entirely true either, the two child shifters in Fates continue the patterns. Veloura is velour (which I cannot think of without associating it with Futurama) and Selkie is silk, though, and I actually think they straight up did this by mistake, Selkie is also the name for an Irish wereseal and probably was the more obvious (if incorrect) meaning to a lot of people given Song of the Sea was released around the same time. Maybe Kaden and Keaton (also those names sound too similar to me) are fabric references too and they're just too obscure. Like Ice Dragon said earlier with the mythological reference, they're trying to be true to them, but trying a bit too hard.

 

Edited January 22 by Jotari

[Medeus]

Keaton is a type of flannel, so that one definitely keeps the naming theme. Kaden's probably like Selkie, a pun on the word cotton.

[Jotari]

48 minutes ago, Medeus said:

Keaton is a type of flannel, so that one definitely keeps the naming theme. Kaden's probably like Selkie, a pun on the word cotton.

There must be at least one seamstress somewhere out there who's also a Fire Emblem fan and got all these reference immediately.