Tuesday, January 4, 2005

yugioh name meanings! yay for yugioh and some pics as well..and just so you know i'm not bakura lover, i'm here ever watchful friend which i see before my eyes...>.>...
Yugioh Name Meanings:
Yo peeps! This section is brought to you exclusively by Tuulikki, who did extensive research on the Japanese names of Yugioh characters and decided to share her findings. It was first posted on ff.net and since then I've added some info on the English names too. So without further ado:

THE MEANINGS OF THE YU-GI-OH! NAMES

Mutou: Written with two kanji: 'warrior' and 'wisteria' (wisteria’s some kind of a climbing plant). The wisteria is a symbol for a number of things, including humility, generosity, prosperity and beauty.
Yami: dark
Yuugi: game
Sugoroku: a child’s dice game (^__^)
Simon: 'He who hears'. Hebrew in origin.
Solomon: 'Peaceful'. Hebrew in origin.

Kaiba: kai = sea; ba = horse. According to Japanese legend, a sea horse is a baby dragon. ^_^ You just need to wait a coupla thousand years for it to grow up. "Tatsunootoshigo" is the actual word for seahorse, and it's translated to "the dropping child of a dragon’".
Seto: ‘Turmoil’. This was a little problematic... ‘Seto’ is written with two kanji, first of which (‘se’) means ‘current; torrent; rapids; shallows; shoal’. The latter is the mark, which means man or person or people, normally read as hito, nin, or jin. I read from some web page that seto means turmoil, but I don’t remember where... Many reviewers confirmed this.
Many people seem to identify Seto with the Egyptian god Set/Seth (patron of Wind, Storm, Chaos, Evil, Darkness, Strength, War, Conflict). Now the very interesting thing about Set is that although he was stormy and dark, he was still considered to be a good guy and a defender of Ra (Sun God). Some even say he was given equal status to Horus (patron of the Living Pharaoh)... ...Or at least he was, for a while...
Sometime around the 26th (unsure) dynasty he went "splat" as far as the people's favor went, and suddenly he was The Bad Guy (pretty much synonymous with "evil"). He betrayed his brother Osiris and claimed the throne for himself... yadayadayada... and I'm thinking "Wow! That's what Seto's supposed to do! (Except that he's Yami's cousin and wasn't quite as successful with the whole hostile take-over plot)". In any case, the whole good guy turning into bad guy angle was certainly similar. ^_^ Puts everything into perspective, ne?
I've forgotten who, but someone mailed me and said that Set actually isn't the brightest of the bunch. Many times he gets duped by the other gods (...what does that say about Osiris?!).
Mokuba: wooden horse
Gozaburo: ‘Go’ means hardness, I don’t know about the rest...

Bakura: ‘Baku’ means tapir (a nocturnal hoofed forest-dwelling mammal of Central and South America and Southeast Asia), and the kanji which is used for writing ‘ra’-part means good (although it is normally read as ‘ryou’).
Ryou: finish; completion; understanding
Amane (Ryou’s dead little sister): Written with two kanji, ‘heaven’ and ‘sound’

Jounouchi: This is written with three kanji. First of them means castle (normal reading: ‘shiro’), the second means ‘this’ (‘kore’), and the last one (‘uchi’) means inside. Is this ‘inside this castle’ or what? At least this made it clear for me how this name is pronounced. (You know, ‘u’ is often used in Japanese to mark a long ‘o’ vowel, and this is probably what it means in Jou, but later in the name this is not the case since ‘no’ and ‘uchi’ are written with different kanji.)
Katsuya: This is written with two kanji, first of them means ‘subdue’ (normally read ‘koku’) and the other is ‘a sum of money’ (normal reading: ‘nari’) I don’t think this means anything as a name....
Shizuka: quiet, peaceful
Serenity: peaceful disposition. ^_^

Honda: (a car! no, just kidding... ^_^) 'hon': origin, main, 'da': rice field
Hiroto: I don’t know about this. For some reason it was written with katakana’s, which are used for foreign names.
Tristan: Welsh for 'clamor' and... something for 'sorrow'. In Arthurian legend, Tristan was a brave knight who fell in love with the Lady Isolt/Isolde of Ireland/Cornwall. To abbreviate the story, he was torn from his love and ended up marrying another woman (incidentally also named Isolt). However Tristan was wounded/poisoned in battle and sent a messenger to his true love in hopes that she could cure him. Isolt (the wife), out of jealously, told him Isolt of Ireland (the lover) had refused to come. Tristan died of heartbreak. When Isolt of Ireland came, she saw her love was dead, embraced him and sighed, dying as well. Her uncle buried her and Tristan side by side and on their graves, a rose tree and a vine plant reached for each other and intertwined. What does this have to do with Yugioh? Nothing. ^_^ I just love this story. Most people agree that it's meant to parallel the love between Gwen and Lancelot.

Otogi: ‘keeping another company’; ‘attending (upon)’
Ryuuji: ryuu: dragon, ji: child
Devlin: Celtic in origin meaning 'brave'. **arches an eyebrow** iiinnteresting.
Duke: Latin for 'leader'. Look it up in the English dictionary and it'll tell you 'high-ranking nobleman', 'ruler of principality'. DragonLadyRM's confirmed that "duke" is an Americanism for fists and punching. It's also a nickname fir John Wayne (cowboy stereotype).

Mazaki: ma: ’just; right; pure; genuine; true’, saki: ‘small peninsula’.
Anzu: apricot, apricot tree

Kujaku: peacock
Mai: dance, dancing. Amanda thinks it's a pun on "my", which works with her dub last-name "Valentine". Therefore we can call her "my valentine" 'cause she's the prettiest girl on she show. ^_^ Or at least the most kick-ass one...
Yami Malik has also taken to calling her "my/Mai dear" in the dub.

Crawford: 'Form the crow's ford'. English in origin. **arches an eyebrow** Exactly what that means I have no idea. Other sources say it means 'a sheltering place for castle'.
Pegasus: 'winged horse' in Greek mythology. Frankly I have no idea why they decided to name him that, unless it has anything to do with the fact that Pegasus was born out of Medusa's blood? Medusa? Eye? I'm grasping at straws here...
Maximillian: English in origin meaning 'the greatest'. **snicker** Now that I understand. Max certainly had the ego for it.

Hawkins: No idea what it means... but I did dig up my Wheel of Time series just to make sure... turns out there's a legendary king in that series by the name of Artur Hawkwing. Just a coincidental similarity, I think. -_-()
Rebecca: 'captivating/knotted cord'. Hebrew in origin.
Arthur: Celtic for 'noble'.

Rashid: 'Integrity'. Arabic origin. Integrity can be defined as "possession of firm principles" or "wholeness/completeness". Apparently it's also Turkish for "righteous" (**arches a skeptical eyebrow**) and Swahili for "wise man"? **blink**
Odion: 'Born of twins'. Egyptian in origin. **grins** Interesting name. Care to speculate the connotations of it?

Ishtar: also known as 'Astarte/Ashtar/Inanna'. Babylonian goddess of love. She also seems to be the Semitic/Egyptian/Greek goddess of fertility, love and war. **is confused** Sometimes she's said to be the same as Isis. Other times she's identified with Anat, who supposedly protects the monarch during coMBA">MBA">MBA">MBA">MBA">MBA">MBA">mbat. **swirly eyes**
Isis: 'Supreme goddess' in Egyptian. Isis embodies the throne. If you're gonna think 'head female honcho' as far as Egyptian deities go, Isis is your gal. She wife of Osiris and mother of Horus in Egyptian mythology. She's the Goddess of Life, Queen of the Gods and was pretty much worshiped universally throughout Egypt.
Malik: New-ish: I thought Malik meant "master" in Arabic, but Pharaohness Of Valley Of The Dead says it means "king". Akina Tori says 'Malak' means angel. XD It would've been scary if Malik meant 'angel'...

Then, I was wondering whether the Japanese versions of Isis and Malik’s names mean something. They don’t, but "ishizue" means foundation stone. New: Miriam says "Mar" means "bitter" in Hebrew, which may have some relevance to "Marik", but maybe not. XD

Here are some things that came up in the reviews (and an answer to one review, I had this posted too, but then... *sigh*):

The names "Yuugi" and "Jounouchi" are taken from the two syllables of the word "yuujou", which means friendship or fellowship. Thanks to Indigo Tantarian for this piece of info. I think that’s... well, kind of cute. ^__^

Meloncrisp: You’re right. ‘Ta’ is a rice field. I just was kind of careless when I wrote Honda’s part... You see, his name consists of couple of those few kanji I do know, and I was more interested to find out what the others mean, and so I was kind of careless with that…
About your question (if I understood it right… ^^;;): If a word which begins with t, p, k or s is the second syllable (or later) of a compound word it usually changes so that it begins with d, b, g or z, in other words, voiceless consonants turn to voiced. This happens in many YGO names: Honda (ta à da), Mazaki (saki à zaki), Gozaburo (saburo à zaburo) etc. I hope you understood, I’m not sure if I explained it that clearly...

There are lots of homophones in Japanese, and this seems to cause a little confusion. For example ‘seto’ means also channel or strait, and ‘zaki’ means blossom, but they are written with different kanji than in Yugioh-names and are therefore different words. Still, if someone just says that his name is Seto, I guess that without knowing how it’s written people could think it means channel...









Comments (2)