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You know, of the e-Valentine I posted a while back, I think I only got one. It goes to show even when Valentines only involve a simple click of the mouse or a few taps on your keyboard, I am cursed to never have the sappy, romantic, or even merely friendly and chocolate-filled that is so widely adored.
That said, I wanted to post this because it's something that's been annoying the hell out of me for a long time, and I wish Yu-Gi-Oh fic writers would listen to JUST THIS ONE THING, if nothing else. I'm serious.
STOP CALLING JOUNOUCHI 'JOU'!
I think this may have been on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fanficrants a while back, but on the off-chance that some otherwise-excellent Yu-Gi-Oh writers on my FL are reading this, and find themselves shameful perpetrators of this BAD, BAD HABIT (you know who you are), let me explain myself so you don't get your panties in a twist.
(1) Despite the dub changing his FAMILY name from Jounouchi into his GIVEN name in the dub, "JOEY," Jounouchi is not and will never be the character's given name. His father's family name is Jounouchi. His mother's married family name was Jounouchi. Shizuka may have even been a Jounouchi at one time, but judging by the character guides, she legally changed her name to 'Kawai' which I assume is Jounouchi's mother's maiden name.
(2) In English, plenty of family names are shortened to be nicknames. Some people (depending on their comfort levels with their own name, their family, or the person referring to them by a nickname) don't mind this. Others do. For example, my mother's first husband had the last name of Smith. To this day, my mother refers to him as "Smitty," not "Michael," which was his given name.
(3) In Japanese, they do not do this. To shorten someone's family name for use as a nickname is often derogatory or downright rude. Sometimes making alterations to the pronunciation of someone's GIVEN name is acceptable-- for example, my name is Meredith, but I had everyone in Japan call me "Meri." As a joke, when I went bowling with my tutors, they nicknamed me "Meririn." That was fine with me. It implies a very friendly rapport between us. "Meri-chan" or just "Meri" was fine, if it was coming from someone I knew and was friendly with. Everyone else called me "Sweet-san."
For example, one would not call Yuugi "Mucchin" ("Mutou-chan" shortened; no one really uses the honorific 'chan' with someone's family name either; that sounds weird), nor would they call Honda "Honhon." However, someone calling Honda by his given name "Hiroto" could probably get away with calling him just "Hiro" or "Hiro-kun," depending on how close they are with him. And considering Jounouchi and Yuugi are two of his closest friends and THEY call him simply by his family name (Yuugi uses an honorific), I doubt anyone outside his immediate family calls him "Hiroto" or any derivation thereof. Were Honda to ever get a girlfriend, she might call him "Hiroto-kun" or even "Hiro-kun."
( In which case a rose by any other name would not smell as sweet )
(4) In Yu-Gi-Oh canon, you can discern the kind of relationships the characters have with one another based on the names and honorifics they use for one another. In various posts across the Yu-Gi-Oh fandom, I've mentioned the following, which are made obvious throughout canon:
-Jounouchi and Kaiba are two of the rudest characters in the series, often intentionally leaving out honorifics such as "kun" or "san," which would be the most likely for them to use in reference to another person that they respect (but not necessarily someone that is socially superior to them). Kaiba, especially, uses insulting words (like "mediocre," among others) to refer to people, other than any names at all! Mokuba's actually not much better in this regard...
-Yuugi is all-around polite. He uses honorifics properly, and the only time he doesn't is in references to his closest friend: Anzu.
-On the other hand, Yami no Yuugi shows just how distinctly different he is from Yuugi: he doesn't use honorifics for Kaiba (while Yuugi does), Jounouchi (even though they're friends), Honda, or anyone else. He's actually rude in his own right! But in referring to Jounouchi, Honda, or Otogi without honorifics, he's not trying to be disrespectful to them (as Kaiba does when HE refers to them without honorifics, or when Kaiba refers to Yuugi by his given name and not his last name), he's just being blunt.
But no matter how much Pegasus might want to topple Kaiba, or how much Kaiba hates Yuugi, or how much Jounouchi hates Kaiba, they never use shortened nicknames. It's not something they do in Japanese culture (commonly). If anything, the "missing" syllables are added to: Minako (from Sailormoon) might be called Minappi, and that's got the same number of syllables as her full given name! No one would give her the nickname "Mina" without any honorific (that is to say, "Mina-chan" might be okay, but just "Mina" probably wouldn't), and no one would call her "Ai" as a shortened version of "Aino," her family name.
The same holds true for Jounouchi. He may not be as close friends with Mai, Anzu, or Otogi as he is with Yuugi or Honda, but NONE of them would call him "Jou."
And for the record Jou =/= Joe. Shortening family names is not the same as shortening given names, especially if they were reversed from the original to the dub! Sure, call him "Joe" if you're in the dub-verse, and in that, his given name IS Joseph. People call him "Joey" (a nickname of Joseph) all the time, and were someone to start calling him "Joe," he probably wouldn't have a problem with it.
But they do not do that in Japan, with Japanese names. Not once in my whole experience with Yu-Gi-Oh have I ever seen any character canonically refer to Jounouchi as "Jou." The only names I have seen used for him (and I do mean "names," not insults like Kaiba) are:
-Jounouchi (Honda, Yami no Yuugi, occasionally Anzu when she's mad)
-Jounouchi-kun (Yuugi, Anzu, Miho)
-Katsuya (from his sister, his mother, and once by Mai)
Here's a further way of pointing it out:
In Japanese culture, one's family name comes first in their writing. They also write not using Roman characters (that is, the alphabet I'm using now), but Chinese characters. For Jounouchi, those characters are:
εδΉε
The first character is pronounced "Jou" the second "no" and the third "uchi." However, were you to try and make a nickname from the characters using the pronunciation of the first character, you'd come across a stumbling block: the first character is pronounced "jou" when in conjunction with certain other Chinese characters, like the other ones in his name. By itself, it's pronounced "shiro," not "jou!" That's another reason why they don't have nicknames like that in Japanese; if they can't write them out, they can't use them in speech, either.
It's one thing to write "Mer" in English; I can understand it whether you say it or write it. But you can't write "Jou" as a nickname for "Jounouchi" in Japanese. His name is made up of a particular set of characters, and you cannot use the character pronounced as "jou" on its own.
(For the record, the character means "castle" when pronounced as "shiro". It's pronounced as "jou" when used in place names; so Osaka Castle might be "Osaka-jou." But again, it MUST be used in conjunction with other characters to imply that it's a name and not a word; thus, to just randomly say "Jou" would confuse someone-- because what are you doing, yelling about some castle? The second kanji is the one usually used for "kore," meaning "this," but it can also be pronounced "no," as it is in his name. To make things even more confusing, the third character means "inside, within," but it's pronounced "uchi," the same way the word for "house, family" is. So the meaning is "inside, within," but the pronunciation is "uchi." But "uchi" in this instance doesn't mean what your Japanese 101 teachers have taught you --house, or family. If you wanted to extrapolate a meaning from his name, it might be "this castle within," which would imply he's a very strong-willed individual. Japanese families tend to like names that show strength or prosperity for the future.)
THAT IS IT.
Even if you were smash drunk, you wouldn't refer to a friend or semi-friend so rudely. I can't emphasize just how rude it is to do that to someone's name. Because it's not just "personal" when you do something like that-- it's dishonoring the whole family. It's lazy writing. It's mis-characterization (the dreaded OOC shows when you refer to characters incorrectly!).
JUST DON'T DO IT.
That said, I wanted to post this because it's something that's been annoying the hell out of me for a long time, and I wish Yu-Gi-Oh fic writers would listen to JUST THIS ONE THING, if nothing else. I'm serious.
STOP CALLING JOUNOUCHI 'JOU'!
I think this may have been on
fanficrants a while back, but on the off-chance that some otherwise-excellent Yu-Gi-Oh writers on my FL are reading this, and find themselves shameful perpetrators of this BAD, BAD HABIT (you know who you are), let me explain myself so you don't get your panties in a twist.(1) Despite the dub changing his FAMILY name from Jounouchi into his GIVEN name in the dub, "JOEY," Jounouchi is not and will never be the character's given name. His father's family name is Jounouchi. His mother's married family name was Jounouchi. Shizuka may have even been a Jounouchi at one time, but judging by the character guides, she legally changed her name to 'Kawai' which I assume is Jounouchi's mother's maiden name.
(2) In English, plenty of family names are shortened to be nicknames. Some people (depending on their comfort levels with their own name, their family, or the person referring to them by a nickname) don't mind this. Others do. For example, my mother's first husband had the last name of Smith. To this day, my mother refers to him as "Smitty," not "Michael," which was his given name.
(3) In Japanese, they do not do this. To shorten someone's family name for use as a nickname is often derogatory or downright rude. Sometimes making alterations to the pronunciation of someone's GIVEN name is acceptable-- for example, my name is Meredith, but I had everyone in Japan call me "Meri." As a joke, when I went bowling with my tutors, they nicknamed me "Meririn." That was fine with me. It implies a very friendly rapport between us. "Meri-chan" or just "Meri" was fine, if it was coming from someone I knew and was friendly with. Everyone else called me "Sweet-san."
For example, one would not call Yuugi "Mucchin" ("Mutou-chan" shortened; no one really uses the honorific 'chan' with someone's family name either; that sounds weird), nor would they call Honda "Honhon." However, someone calling Honda by his given name "Hiroto" could probably get away with calling him just "Hiro" or "Hiro-kun," depending on how close they are with him. And considering Jounouchi and Yuugi are two of his closest friends and THEY call him simply by his family name (Yuugi uses an honorific), I doubt anyone outside his immediate family calls him "Hiroto" or any derivation thereof. Were Honda to ever get a girlfriend, she might call him "Hiroto-kun" or even "Hiro-kun."
( In which case a rose by any other name would not smell as sweet )
(4) In Yu-Gi-Oh canon, you can discern the kind of relationships the characters have with one another based on the names and honorifics they use for one another. In various posts across the Yu-Gi-Oh fandom, I've mentioned the following, which are made obvious throughout canon:
-Jounouchi and Kaiba are two of the rudest characters in the series, often intentionally leaving out honorifics such as "kun" or "san," which would be the most likely for them to use in reference to another person that they respect (but not necessarily someone that is socially superior to them). Kaiba, especially, uses insulting words (like "mediocre," among others) to refer to people, other than any names at all! Mokuba's actually not much better in this regard...
-Yuugi is all-around polite. He uses honorifics properly, and the only time he doesn't is in references to his closest friend: Anzu.
-On the other hand, Yami no Yuugi shows just how distinctly different he is from Yuugi: he doesn't use honorifics for Kaiba (while Yuugi does), Jounouchi (even though they're friends), Honda, or anyone else. He's actually rude in his own right! But in referring to Jounouchi, Honda, or Otogi without honorifics, he's not trying to be disrespectful to them (as Kaiba does when HE refers to them without honorifics, or when Kaiba refers to Yuugi by his given name and not his last name), he's just being blunt.
But no matter how much Pegasus might want to topple Kaiba, or how much Kaiba hates Yuugi, or how much Jounouchi hates Kaiba, they never use shortened nicknames. It's not something they do in Japanese culture (commonly). If anything, the "missing" syllables are added to: Minako (from Sailormoon) might be called Minappi, and that's got the same number of syllables as her full given name! No one would give her the nickname "Mina" without any honorific (that is to say, "Mina-chan" might be okay, but just "Mina" probably wouldn't), and no one would call her "Ai" as a shortened version of "Aino," her family name.
The same holds true for Jounouchi. He may not be as close friends with Mai, Anzu, or Otogi as he is with Yuugi or Honda, but NONE of them would call him "Jou."
And for the record Jou =/= Joe. Shortening family names is not the same as shortening given names, especially if they were reversed from the original to the dub! Sure, call him "Joe" if you're in the dub-verse, and in that, his given name IS Joseph. People call him "Joey" (a nickname of Joseph) all the time, and were someone to start calling him "Joe," he probably wouldn't have a problem with it.
But they do not do that in Japan, with Japanese names. Not once in my whole experience with Yu-Gi-Oh have I ever seen any character canonically refer to Jounouchi as "Jou." The only names I have seen used for him (and I do mean "names," not insults like Kaiba) are:
-Jounouchi (Honda, Yami no Yuugi, occasionally Anzu when she's mad)
-Jounouchi-kun (Yuugi, Anzu, Miho)
-Katsuya (from his sister, his mother, and once by Mai)
Here's a further way of pointing it out:
In Japanese culture, one's family name comes first in their writing. They also write not using Roman characters (that is, the alphabet I'm using now), but Chinese characters. For Jounouchi, those characters are:
εδΉε
The first character is pronounced "Jou" the second "no" and the third "uchi." However, were you to try and make a nickname from the characters using the pronunciation of the first character, you'd come across a stumbling block: the first character is pronounced "jou" when in conjunction with certain other Chinese characters, like the other ones in his name. By itself, it's pronounced "shiro," not "jou!" That's another reason why they don't have nicknames like that in Japanese; if they can't write them out, they can't use them in speech, either.
It's one thing to write "Mer" in English; I can understand it whether you say it or write it. But you can't write "Jou" as a nickname for "Jounouchi" in Japanese. His name is made up of a particular set of characters, and you cannot use the character pronounced as "jou" on its own.
(For the record, the character means "castle" when pronounced as "shiro". It's pronounced as "jou" when used in place names; so Osaka Castle might be "Osaka-jou." But again, it MUST be used in conjunction with other characters to imply that it's a name and not a word; thus, to just randomly say "Jou" would confuse someone-- because what are you doing, yelling about some castle? The second kanji is the one usually used for "kore," meaning "this," but it can also be pronounced "no," as it is in his name. To make things even more confusing, the third character means "inside, within," but it's pronounced "uchi," the same way the word for "house, family" is. So the meaning is "inside, within," but the pronunciation is "uchi." But "uchi" in this instance doesn't mean what your Japanese 101 teachers have taught you --house, or family. If you wanted to extrapolate a meaning from his name, it might be "this castle within," which would imply he's a very strong-willed individual. Japanese families tend to like names that show strength or prosperity for the future.)
THAT IS IT.
Even if you were smash drunk, you wouldn't refer to a friend or semi-friend so rudely. I can't emphasize just how rude it is to do that to someone's name. Because it's not just "personal" when you do something like that-- it's dishonoring the whole family. It's lazy writing. It's mis-characterization (the dreaded OOC shows when you refer to characters incorrectly!).
JUST DON'T DO IT.
