Am I The Only One That Thought Elfire Was Fire From Elves?

[Randoman]

I've been meaning to make this thread topic for quite some time.

Way back when I played my first Fire Emblem game (FE3) and saw the tome "Elfire", and saw that it had significantly more attack power than the regular Fire tome, I thought to myself, "okay, I guess fire from elves is more powerful than regular fire. I mean, elves are magical creatures, so it makes enough sense that fire spells that they cast are more powerful than fire cast from other beings." Only when I played Fire Emblem Awakening and saw that Elwind and Elthunder existed did I realize that El was a prefix, showing it's a more powerful version of the standard tome. I felt pretty dumb afterwards, though to this day I still can't erase the idea from my mind that Elfire is fire from elves.

Has anyone else here also thought that Elfire is fire from elves?

On a somewhat related note, I keep mentally reading the spell "Bolganone" as baloney every time I see the word. That's also a habit I developed back when I first played FE3.

[AnonymousSpeed]

I have not had this experience, but it's an interesting idea. However, Fire Emblem only has one subhuman race- the various furries.

1 minute ago, Randoman said:

On a somewhat related note, I keep mentally reading the spell "Bolganone" as baloney every time I see the word. That's also a habit I developed back when I first played FE3.

I read it as "Bolga-goan" to this day.

[ARMADS!!!]

Haha I never thought of this, but actually sounds like a pretty interesting idea.

 My first FE was FE7 (after Heroes, so I already knew about the existence of Elthunder and Elwind), and I remember being pissed that they only had Elfire there but not the others, specially because Thunder was my favorite anima tome on the game so I thought that the existence of an Elthubder would be awesome and was mandatory, I kept waiting for it the whole and it never came...

 On a not so much related note... Aircalibur is a sick name and the fact that they chose Excalibur to be a tome instead of a sword (as one would expect) too.

[BrightBow]

If you never were one of the German translators, you are most certainly not the only one. I don't think they ever stopped using Elfenlicht, Elfenwind, Elfendonner and Elfenblitz.

[ARMADS!!!]

I was just searching for the etimology of Elfire on the FE wiki and while it says nothing, I saw that Elfire in italian is "Fuoco d'elfo", I figure that means "Elf's fire"/"Fire of elf" as far as I understand. It's a pretty cute name.

[Acacia Sgt]

Never thought of elves, but the name always bothered me.

Elfire... El fire... It might as well be called Thefuego...

[lenticular]

I've always interpreted the "el" prefix as being from the term for God/a god in various Semitic languages. So, "God's fire", "fire of the gods", or something along those lines. I've no idea if that was what the original creators were going for, but it's how I always see it.

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Randoman said:

On a somewhat related note, I keep mentally reading the spell "Bolganone" as baloney every time I see the word. That's also a habit I developed back when I first played FE3.

For me it defaults to Bologna, the Italian city.

[Capt. Fargus]

As one with FE7 as his first game, I thought it was short for “hellfire”

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I always thought it because it's mentioned in the German translation.

[Nidoking]

14 hours ago, Jotari said:

For me it defaults to Bologna, the Italian city.

Same to me, but with Bolognesa, as if that spell was throwing really hot sauce.

[Acacia Sgt]

La lasagna bolognesa é buoníssima!

On a serious note... what is even Bolganone? Was it meant to be Volcano? I think in some animations it does show fire erupting from the ground. But even in Japanese the Katakana uses Ga instead of Ka.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

17 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

On a serious note... what is even Bolganone? Was it meant to be Volcano? I think in some animations it does show fire erupting from the ground. But even in Japanese the Katakana uses Ga instead of Ka.

thats what the wiki assumes Bolganone - Fire Emblem Wiki

 

[Acacia Sgt]

2 minutes ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

thats what the wiki assumes Bolganone - Fire Emblem Wiki

 

Looking there, it seems the Chinese and Korean translations do go for Volcano.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

I always just assumed it was weird naming decisions like FF´s (?) Firaga or Thundaga or w/e they are called.

6 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Looking there, it seems the Chinese and Korean translations do go for Volcano.

I also remember the spell blowing fire from the ground and the gallery on the wiki suggests the same.

It do be one of the og tomes and i kinda appreciate the modest obscurity of the name.

[Acacia Sgt]

14 minutes ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

I always just assumed it was weird naming decisions like FF´s (?) Firaga or Thundaga or w/e they are called.

Yes, it's FF which adds the -ra -ga -ja, etc. suffixes.

14 minutes ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

I also remember the spell blowing fire from the ground and the gallery on the wiki suggests the same.

It do be one of the og tomes and i kinda appreciate the modest obscurity of the name.

I suppose it does make the name more unique, and thus unique to FE.

[Yexin]

others already mentioned this, but the italian versions are indeed called "elf's fire", "elf's thunder" and "elf's wind", but I always thought of elves in FE as some kind of magical creatures possibly mentioned in fairy tales, much like Puck from Berserk

but now I really want a "Fire Emblem - The Lord of the Rings Edition" game though

Edited January 13 by Yexin

[ping]

15 minutes ago, Yexin said:

but now I really want a "Fire Emblem - The Lord of the Rings Edition" game though

Finally a game where Archers are completely overpowered as long as they have pointy ears.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

No but I'm convinced Hammers were crafted by dwarves. Tali ho!

[Etrurian emperor]

I thought Elfire just meant ''Fire but better''. And that it does. 

[Jotari]

10 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

La lasagna bolognesa é buoníssima!

On a serious note... what is even Bolganone? Was it meant to be Volcano? I think in some animations it does show fire erupting from the ground. But even in Japanese the Katakana uses Ga instead of Ka.

With Japanese phonetics a Ga sounds just as good as Ka. But it really should have the smaller character to give it a -kya sound to mimic English. The really questionable thing is the 'n' at the end. Volcano could be squinted as Bolgano, but there's no reason at all to make it Volcanon if that's what you're going for. So maybe it's less volcano and more meant to be something like Vulcan, god of volcanoes. But then the 'no' katakana has no business being there. So...*shrug*. Maybe it was intentionally meant to be a portmanteau of Volcano and Cannon.

Edited January 14 by Jotari

[Acacia Sgt]

25 minutes ago, Jotari said:

With Japanese phonetics a Ga sounds just as good as Ka. But it really should have the smaller character to give it a -kya sound to mimic English. The really questionable thing is the 'n' at the end. Volcano could be squinted as Bolgano, but there's no reason at all to make it Volcanon if that's what you're going for. So maybe it's less volcano and more meant to be something like Vulcan, god of volcanoes. But then the 'no' katakana has no business being there. So...*shrug*. Maybe it was intentionally meant to be a portmanteau of Volcano and Cannon.

I do wonder if, as the wiki speculates, that they were deliberating distorting the word. Since why use Ga when Ka is actually there? Why the N at the end? As you say, it's questionable... unless it was deliberate. I think the other East Asian translations using Volcano means it is meant to be that, but it's being misspelled intentionally for flair.

[Jotari]

43 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I do wonder if, as the wiki speculates, that they were deliberating distorting the word. Since why use Ga when Ka is actually there? Why the N at the end? As you say, it's questionable... unless it was deliberate. I think the other East Asian translations using Volcano means it is meant to be that, but it's being misspelled intentionally for flair.

One way or the other the B translation is probably not what they were going for. It's almost certainly meant to be a V and meant to be related to Volcano in some way...unless we're way off and it's actually meant to be a reference to Zelda...because it literally has the same kana as Ganon. Boru Ganon...Ball Ganon?

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Started with Shadow Dragon. Definitely thought this. To the extent that, were a stronger version of Thunder to exist, I would expect it to be called "Elfthunder".

Interestingly, the other El- tomes only exist in Genealogy, the Tellius games, Awakening, and Engage. Whereas, Elfire adds the Archanea games (and remakes), Thracia, and the GBA games to the mix. So there are far more titles with "just" Elfire.

9 hours ago, Jotari said:

Maybe it was intentionally meant to be a portmanteau of Volcano and Cannon.

Not the craziest idea.

Thinking on it, if I were trying to write "Volcano" in katakana, I would probably go with ボルケーノ. Which transliterates to "Bo-ru-keii-no". Using the ケー combo for a "long a" effect. Conversely, the ガ which they went with has a "short a" sound, the likes of which you'd hear in "cannon". Of course, that still doesn't explain why the went with "ga" rather than "ka".