Pinned

Translating Commission

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Rant: Belle en het Beest's naming

Moshi-moshi, minna-tachi!

So I feel bored at the moment while downloading Fate/Prototype Drama CD and I don't want to look at the dialogues in Kiss Anthology or conjuring up paragraphs of an RP character point of view then I thought why not post something else here.

This is totally a rant about my WIP spin-off fic and really trivia so please ignore this as I most likely will only bore the heck out of you.

--

The particular spin-off fic that I'm talking about is Belle en het Beest, Dutch for Beauty and the Beast, and is based on In the Moonlight by aicchan. Basically the story is revolves around how Minos and Albafica met and got together. I have it change POV every chapter, like how some novels do—since the story is actually written by Albafica, who works as a freelance novelist in ITM. This has been implied since the very first chapter, with Camus finding a book titled Belle en het Beest and decided to read it.

Do you understand that? No? Okay, moving on.

I'm going to start rambling about the names I gave to the characters.

As you know, most of Saint Seiya characters have no surname known to readers. They have titles, though, like Pegasus Seiya, Sagittarius Aiolos, etc. I don't know if the mangaka(s) are just too lazy to think up surnames or think it's unecessary since the setting is European so basically it's okay go rude by calling others on first name basis or they're imitating some other series where only really important people get to have surnames (like for example Suikoden's aristocratic characters) but the basic idea is: most of them don't have surnames.

This kind of irks me as I'm pretty fond of writing AU and happy fic for them (because the fandom doesn't need more angst element than it already has) and it's just weird if say that in a High School AU when a teacher is calling the roster something like this happens:

Teacher: Nakajima-kun.
Student A: Yes.
Teacher: Sakuragi-san.
Student B: Yes, ma'am.
Teacher: Seiya-kun.
Seiya: Yeaaah.

Like, no.
Seiya is not his surname so I'm not going to accept this kind of thing /fliptables

So I gave these characters last names. Though I came up with them only when I arrive to the part where I make someone refers to the character by last name and not long before that, know that I gave a long thought when I came up with these names. Because, you know. A name is the first gift that your parents gave you, so it's important. See how I do it here.

Right now there are only two characters in Belle en het Beest who had a full name, and they're part of the royal family—Lugonis and Albafica. For Lugonis, I gave him the name Lugonis Alseis Challwa and Albafica's Albafica Quina Challwa. I'll tell you why I gave them the middle names and the last name.

Challwa is their family name. They're member of a dynasty, a ruling family of the current generation. Just like how Princess Rose Guinea Avalon of Chronicle 2nd came from Avalon dynasty. The origin of Challwa name came from Quechua language for fish. Obviously, this relates to the fact that both are Pisces Gold Saints.

The reason I choose Quechua language is because it's one of language used in South American countries, such as Ecuador. Why Ecuador? Well, some people (or me) have a headcanon that Lugonis (or his family) came from Ecuador, since he is named after a plant native to the country.

Alseis, if you look up with google help, is a species of plant which complete scientific name is Alseis lugonis. As mentioned before, this plant is endemic in Ecuador.

That particular plant is part of Rubiaceae family, which links us to Quina. Quina or quinine (also widely known as Chinchona), is also a connected to Ecuador. In this case, it is considered the national tree of Ecuador, although unofficial. It is originally discovered by Quechua people, and was first used to cure malaria disease.

So you see, when I try to name the characters, I try to link the name to them with a little bit of twist. Indeed, I tried to go the easy way and name them after rose species but no, it just doesn't feel 'right' to me. I'm also planning to conjure up full name for Pefko and Luco, because they're part of the royal family, and Shion, too, for he is the supreme general of the kingdom's army.

Perhaps I should think up a full name for Minos too, considering I have him as the son of one of the very first vampires created, so his status is actually something like a vampire prince, but... nah...

No comments:

Post a Comment