A lesson in Egyptian.
Jan. 16th, 2006 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
azuriteYEAH! I'M SO HAPPY YOU FINALLY PUT UP ANOTHER CHAPTER! I CAN'T WAIT TO READ THE NEXT. PLEASE WRITE SOON YOUR STORIES ARE REALLY GOOD AND CONTAIN ALMOST KNOW GRAMMER MISTAKES.: ) PLEASE WRITE MORE SOON : (
Hee. Can anyone else spot the irony in that review? (Note: I did NOT change that review AT ALL. That's how it arrived in my inbox. :D)
Onward and sideways:
You're going to need support for Shift-JIS on your computer if you want to really understand this rant, because I will be using a minimal amount of Japanese. It's either that or you can just trust me.
One of my big pet peeves in the Yu-Gi-Oh fandom is names. I got into the anime thanks to the dub, so I'm rather fond of names like Téa, Duke, Tristan, and Joey, even if they seem to come out of left field compared to Anzu, Ryuuji, Hiroto, and Katsuya. Also, it's a known fact that manga-ka are not gods. That is to say, even if they create a series, they're not necessarily basing everything off fact, which is especially dangerous when a series is MOSTLY realistic and then just warps a few important "real-world" facts.
You're allowed to suspend your belief for series like Sailor Moon, because it effectively creates a "parallel world" where superheroes and evil villains run pretty rampant. The concept of a Moon Kingdom and Earth's astronauts NOT stumbling upon it is believable, because Naoko Takeuchi makes it so. On the other hand, Takahashi never explains how he decided when Atem(u)'s reign took place, or why he chose the Egyptian names he did.
You can blame part of the problem with names in Yu-Gi-Oh on the translators; Viz's Anita Sengupta is not the most skilled translator out there, sad as I am to say. Knowing ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and Arabic were probably not on the "required skills" list when she became the head translator for Yu-Gi-Oh! Viz probably established some rules of their own, even if they were touting the "unseen even on the hit TV show!" bits as reasons to buy the manga.
As I previously said with Seto's Egyptian name, there's just a lot of controversy about it. Fandom (and fanon) doesn't help matters any, nor do the many different ways of interpreting both Egyptian/Arabic and Japanese. But we're going to make the attempt anyway, if just to enlighten folks a bit.
Shaadii is the character that first appears in the "first" arc of Yu-Gi-Oh, when Yuugi is first getting used to his Millennium Puzzle and the mysterious connections it has to history, bad people getting punished, and his frequent lapses into unconsciousness. He also appears in the first series Toei animation. In both, his history was not specifically established so early on. In fact, it changed from the Toei animation to the Duel Monsters (NAS-produced) series, and may have also been altered from the start of the manga to the end.
In the NAS animation (what we see as the dub), Shaadii reappeared at the start of the Memory World/Millennium World/Dawn of the Duel arc, when in the manga, only his "servant" Bobasa appeared. Bobasa appears later on, but the people at NAS thought it fitting to give Shaadii a real past. According to the anime, he was killed by Bakura in the past, and is only a spirit. There were already hints of this during Battle City, when Shaadii appeared intermittently to Honda, Otogi, and Isis. This directly counters what the Toei animation had him as-- a flesh-and-blood man (who needs to take the airplane to get places). The manga doesn't establish much of a past for Shaadii, as far as I could tell. If he was ever intended to be the reincarnation (dead or alive) of someone, it wasn't explicitly stated, and therefore, could only be assumed (fanon).
Down to business: Shaadii's name appears as シャーディー (Shaadii) in the Japanese. Since it's an Arabic name, Takahashi correctly uses katakana to express the characters. In katakana, one does NOT double up the vowels to extend the sound, as you do in hiragana (this is why there tend to be so many different romanizations of words with doubled-up vowels or lengthened sounds in them. For example, Yuugi, Yugi, Yûgi; Muto, Mutoh, Mutou, Mutô). In katakana, to extend the sound of a vowel, you add a line.
Half-size characters, such as the "ya" and the "i" seen above (the first is to turn "Shi" into "Sha", and the second is to turn "de" into "di") are a way of partially altering the original sound. There are very few of these "half" size characters, and they only exist to:
* Turn the original syllables into "ya" versions (e.g. Sha, Cha, Kya, Nya)
* Turn the original syllables into "yu" versions (e.g. Shu, Chu, Kyu, Nyu)
* Turn the original syllables into "yo" versions (e.g. Sho, Cho, Kyo, Nyo)
* Turn the original syllables into 'non-existent' versions that approximate foreign sounds (e.g. di, zi, vi, wi, she[h], je)
The first half of Shaadii's name makes uses of the first method of half-size character use; it turns Shi into Sha. The second half of Shaadii's names makes use of the last method of half-size character use; it turns de into di (more specifically dei, which we would pronounce as "di" because of how quickly you slur together the e and i sounds).
Whenever you romanize a word that's written in katakana, you ALWAYS romanize the "lines" as a double version of the vowel that preceded it. All Japanese syllables except for one, "n" end in a vowel. This makes romanizing foreign names that are not intended to have an end-vowel sound VERY STRANGE.
* This is why 'Atemu' may or may not be the correct version of the Pharaoh's name. Yes, Takahashi drew the hieroglyphics to indicate the double 'oo' sound, but unlike Japanese, Egyptian names rarely had vowels in them, especially in royal names. Vowels were added to aid the Western-European pronunciation of Egyptian words, and the system stuck. Some naming sites claim that Atemu is a legitimate Egyptian name, meaning 'god of Annu,' where Annu is a place, roughly around what we call the Heliopolis. There's no historical proof to back that up, afaik.
However, Viz translates his name as 'Shadi' therefore dropping the additional syllables. This may have led to the confusion regarding his name and a possible connection with Shada.
Speaking of Shada, our ancient Egyptian holder of the Millennium Key/Ankh, his name is written as シャダ. No lines, no elongated vowels. Just Shada. That's how you romanize his name. Viz actually gets this one right. However, various romanizations on the 'Net have called him Shaadaa, Shaadah, Shadah... all number of things that would seem to imply an elongation of vowels. This is incorrect, both based on the Japanese canon and on accurate Egyptian nomenclature. A word written with elongated vowels in Japanese is NOT the same as a word written without the elongated vowels, even if the word in question is foreign.
An interesting point: certain name sites have said that "Shadi" means "singer" in Egyptian, (and "older sister" in Navajo!) while "Shada" is a Native-American (which tribe, I'm not sure) name meaning "pelican." While it seems Takahashi COULD have had some reasoning behind his Egyptian name choices, it's also just as possible that he picked the names because he thought they sounded cool.
Malik is most definitely an Egyptian name; it means "king" (har har), but Marik is a warped "dub" version of the name, mixing the Japanese approximation (there's no l in Japanese, only an "rl" sound which sounds like a "rolled r" like you'd hear in Spanish).
Rishid doesn't appear to be an Egyptian name, but Rashidi is, meaning "Servant." Funny how Takahashi wouldn't have used the actual Arabic name, when it would have translated over perfectly to Japanese! (Rishid in Japanese is written as リシド). The meaning of the name could also make sense, if you consider how loyal Rishid is to Malik.
Odion, the name the dub used in place of Rishid (for whatever weird reason) is also an actual Egyptian name, but it's got a pretty bizarre meaning (someone should make a fic exploring his real past!): born of twins. Odion could also have been approximated in Japanese (オディオン), but it was a dub creation.
Anyone that knows the slightest bit about Egyptian mythology would know that Isis is the name of the primary goddess in the Egyptian pantheon; she's the wife (!) of Osiris, king of the Underworld. Ishizu is another example of bad dubbing, as the Japanese pronunciation of 'Isis' (アイシズ or Aishizu） got morphed into Ishizu (Ee-shee-zoo, instead of the Japanese Eye-shee-zoo).
In hieroglyphics, the name Set (brother of Osiris, the rival of Osiris for the throne, an all-around nasty and disgusting guy in much of Egyptian mythology-- though I will admit that he had his followings in various parts of Egypt, and myths tend to get very warped by different cultures and as time goes by) DOES NOT USE THE CHARACTER FOR "TH." (Want to see the character for "th"? Click here.)
For more info on this, check out my pics gallery:
Atemu, Etimu? - http://pics.livejournal.com/the_sweet/gallery/00006141 & http://pics.livejournal.com/the_sweet/gallery/00006141
Anubis - http://pics.livejournal.com/the_sweet/gallery/00006141
Isis - http://pics.livejournal.com/the_sweet/gallery/00006141
Set vs. Seth - http://pics.livejournal.com/the_sweet/gallery/00006141
Oh,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mmagnet_ff~! When is TNB16 coming out? WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!? ;_;
Andguardian_kysra, did the Egyptians know about the Greeks in the 18th Dynasty (c. 1550-1295 BCE, as late as 1004 BCE)? If so, how were relations between the two? *yes, is plotting something eebil*
Hee. Can anyone else spot the irony in that review? (Note: I did NOT change that review AT ALL. That's how it arrived in my inbox. :D)
Onward and sideways:
You're going to need support for Shift-JIS on your computer if you want to really understand this rant, because I will be using a minimal amount of Japanese. It's either that or you can just trust me.
One of my big pet peeves in the Yu-Gi-Oh fandom is names. I got into the anime thanks to the dub, so I'm rather fond of names like Téa, Duke, Tristan, and Joey, even if they seem to come out of left field compared to Anzu, Ryuuji, Hiroto, and Katsuya. Also, it's a known fact that manga-ka are not gods. That is to say, even if they create a series, they're not necessarily basing everything off fact, which is especially dangerous when a series is MOSTLY realistic and then just warps a few important "real-world" facts.
You're allowed to suspend your belief for series like Sailor Moon, because it effectively creates a "parallel world" where superheroes and evil villains run pretty rampant. The concept of a Moon Kingdom and Earth's astronauts NOT stumbling upon it is believable, because Naoko Takeuchi makes it so. On the other hand, Takahashi never explains how he decided when Atem(u)'s reign took place, or why he chose the Egyptian names he did.
You can blame part of the problem with names in Yu-Gi-Oh on the translators; Viz's Anita Sengupta is not the most skilled translator out there, sad as I am to say. Knowing ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and Arabic were probably not on the "required skills" list when she became the head translator for Yu-Gi-Oh! Viz probably established some rules of their own, even if they were touting the "unseen even on the hit TV show!" bits as reasons to buy the manga.
As I previously said with Seto's Egyptian name, there's just a lot of controversy about it. Fandom (and fanon) doesn't help matters any, nor do the many different ways of interpreting both Egyptian/Arabic and Japanese. But we're going to make the attempt anyway, if just to enlighten folks a bit.
Shaadii is the character that first appears in the "first" arc of Yu-Gi-Oh, when Yuugi is first getting used to his Millennium Puzzle and the mysterious connections it has to history, bad people getting punished, and his frequent lapses into unconsciousness. He also appears in the first series Toei animation. In both, his history was not specifically established so early on. In fact, it changed from the Toei animation to the Duel Monsters (NAS-produced) series, and may have also been altered from the start of the manga to the end.
In the NAS animation (what we see as the dub), Shaadii reappeared at the start of the Memory World/Millennium World/Dawn of the Duel arc, when in the manga, only his "servant" Bobasa appeared. Bobasa appears later on, but the people at NAS thought it fitting to give Shaadii a real past. According to the anime, he was killed by Bakura in the past, and is only a spirit. There were already hints of this during Battle City, when Shaadii appeared intermittently to Honda, Otogi, and Isis. This directly counters what the Toei animation had him as-- a flesh-and-blood man (who needs to take the airplane to get places). The manga doesn't establish much of a past for Shaadii, as far as I could tell. If he was ever intended to be the reincarnation (dead or alive) of someone, it wasn't explicitly stated, and therefore, could only be assumed (fanon).
Down to business: Shaadii's name appears as シャーディー (Shaadii) in the Japanese. Since it's an Arabic name, Takahashi correctly uses katakana to express the characters. In katakana, one does NOT double up the vowels to extend the sound, as you do in hiragana (this is why there tend to be so many different romanizations of words with doubled-up vowels or lengthened sounds in them. For example, Yuugi, Yugi, Yûgi; Muto, Mutoh, Mutou, Mutô). In katakana, to extend the sound of a vowel, you add a line.
Half-size characters, such as the "ya" and the "i" seen above (the first is to turn "Shi" into "Sha", and the second is to turn "de" into "di") are a way of partially altering the original sound. There are very few of these "half" size characters, and they only exist to:
* Turn the original syllables into "ya" versions (e.g. Sha, Cha, Kya, Nya)
* Turn the original syllables into "yu" versions (e.g. Shu, Chu, Kyu, Nyu)
* Turn the original syllables into "yo" versions (e.g. Sho, Cho, Kyo, Nyo)
* Turn the original syllables into 'non-existent' versions that approximate foreign sounds (e.g. di, zi, vi, wi, she[h], je)
The first half of Shaadii's name makes uses of the first method of half-size character use; it turns Shi into Sha. The second half of Shaadii's names makes use of the last method of half-size character use; it turns de into di (more specifically dei, which we would pronounce as "di" because of how quickly you slur together the e and i sounds).
Whenever you romanize a word that's written in katakana, you ALWAYS romanize the "lines" as a double version of the vowel that preceded it. All Japanese syllables except for one, "n" end in a vowel. This makes romanizing foreign names that are not intended to have an end-vowel sound VERY STRANGE.
* This is why 'Atemu' may or may not be the correct version of the Pharaoh's name. Yes, Takahashi drew the hieroglyphics to indicate the double 'oo' sound, but unlike Japanese, Egyptian names rarely had vowels in them, especially in royal names. Vowels were added to aid the Western-European pronunciation of Egyptian words, and the system stuck. Some naming sites claim that Atemu is a legitimate Egyptian name, meaning 'god of Annu,' where Annu is a place, roughly around what we call the Heliopolis. There's no historical proof to back that up, afaik.
However, Viz translates his name as 'Shadi' therefore dropping the additional syllables. This may have led to the confusion regarding his name and a possible connection with Shada.
Speaking of Shada, our ancient Egyptian holder of the Millennium Key/Ankh, his name is written as シャダ. No lines, no elongated vowels. Just Shada. That's how you romanize his name. Viz actually gets this one right. However, various romanizations on the 'Net have called him Shaadaa, Shaadah, Shadah... all number of things that would seem to imply an elongation of vowels. This is incorrect, both based on the Japanese canon and on accurate Egyptian nomenclature. A word written with elongated vowels in Japanese is NOT the same as a word written without the elongated vowels, even if the word in question is foreign.
An interesting point: certain name sites have said that "Shadi" means "singer" in Egyptian, (and "older sister" in Navajo!) while "Shada" is a Native-American (which tribe, I'm not sure) name meaning "pelican." While it seems Takahashi COULD have had some reasoning behind his Egyptian name choices, it's also just as possible that he picked the names because he thought they sounded cool.
Malik is most definitely an Egyptian name; it means "king" (har har), but Marik is a warped "dub" version of the name, mixing the Japanese approximation (there's no l in Japanese, only an "rl" sound which sounds like a "rolled r" like you'd hear in Spanish).
Rishid doesn't appear to be an Egyptian name, but Rashidi is, meaning "Servant." Funny how Takahashi wouldn't have used the actual Arabic name, when it would have translated over perfectly to Japanese! (Rishid in Japanese is written as リシド). The meaning of the name could also make sense, if you consider how loyal Rishid is to Malik.
Odion, the name the dub used in place of Rishid (for whatever weird reason) is also an actual Egyptian name, but it's got a pretty bizarre meaning (someone should make a fic exploring his real past!): born of twins. Odion could also have been approximated in Japanese (オディオン), but it was a dub creation.
Anyone that knows the slightest bit about Egyptian mythology would know that Isis is the name of the primary goddess in the Egyptian pantheon; she's the wife (!) of Osiris, king of the Underworld. Ishizu is another example of bad dubbing, as the Japanese pronunciation of 'Isis' (アイシズ or Aishizu） got morphed into Ishizu (Ee-shee-zoo, instead of the Japanese Eye-shee-zoo).
In hieroglyphics, the name Set (brother of Osiris, the rival of Osiris for the throne, an all-around nasty and disgusting guy in much of Egyptian mythology-- though I will admit that he had his followings in various parts of Egypt, and myths tend to get very warped by different cultures and as time goes by) DOES NOT USE THE CHARACTER FOR "TH." (Want to see the character for "th"? Click here.)
For more info on this, check out my pics gallery:
Atemu, Etimu? - http://pics.livejournal.com/the_sweet/gallery/00006141 & http://pics.livejournal.com/the_sweet/gallery/00006141
Anubis - http://pics.livejournal.com/the_sweet/gallery/00006141
Isis - http://pics.livejournal.com/the_sweet/gallery/00006141
Set vs. Seth - http://pics.livejournal.com/the_sweet/gallery/00006141
Oh,
mmagnet_ff~! When is TNB16 coming out? WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!? ;_;And
guardian_kysra, did the Egyptians know about the Greeks in the 18th Dynasty (c. 1550-1295 BCE, as late as 1004 BCE)? If so, how were relations between the two? *yes, is plotting something eebil*
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![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-01-17 06:31 am (UTC)I should get back into some of it one of these days. After all, I do have a tattoo reflecting the interest. Might as well sustain it!
As to your inquiry: Oh, TNB16 IS out. NOOOOOOWWWWWW! ^_^
no subject
Date: 2006-01-17 11:47 pm (UTC)Bad spellers of the world, untie!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-18 01:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-18 04:37 am (UTC)Burn all misspellings!
I had to put in my 2 cents
Date: 2006-01-18 12:03 am (UTC)My theory on Isis turned into Ishizu is 1) They wanted to point out that she was Aishizu in the AE arc, or 2) Isis is an Egyptian goddess and it's a no-no and politically incorrect to incorporate "too much religion" into a show for children. (Oh, gag me! Wasn't Selena Kyle's--a.k.a Catwoman--pet cat named Isis in the WB's Batman cartoon? It was a cat but she was named after a goddess. Hello!)
I found an interesting site a couple years ago 20,000 Names and it has Set and Seth listed separately.
Odion means "born of twins"
Rashidi means "wise" (on that site)
Atemu is a myth name (great god Annu)
Malik is listed in the Arabic section and has three meanings: master, angel, king
Isis is listed in both Egyptian and Arabian as an Egyptian goddess
Anybody know Bakura's Egyptian name? So far, I've seen "Dorobo" as his name--is this correct?
Okay, I'm done.
For now.
Re: I had to put in my 2 cents
Date: 2006-01-18 02:17 am (UTC)As for them changing the name for that reason-- MEH! I'd say that's giving them too much credit. Not too many people would associate the Egyptian pantheon with "true" religion nowadays (though I have a great respect for the real Egyptian gods). They basically just screwed up the translation: her name came from Egyptian --> Japanese --> English, when it should have gone ALL the way back to Egyptian.
Bakura does not HAVE an Egyptian name; Dorobou (and the alternate Touzokuou) both mean "Thief King" in Japanese. That's the interesting thing about Bakura-- his name "always" was Bakura, even in AE. It didn't change throughout the millennia, and unlike the Pharaoh, HIS name didn't hold any power. In fact, Bakura always remembered more of his past than YnY *ever* did, and that was probably what fueled him on!
Another site says Bakura is a girl's name in Hebrew, but my thoroughly-Jewish grandparents didn't recognize it as a legitimate name. Bakr and Baqir are both male Arabic names though! The character for "Baku" in the start of Bakura's name means "tapir" (the animal, I think), and the character used for "ra" is a very uncommon (4th Nanori) reading for that character. What's interesting is that the ON reading for the character is "Ryou"! So his name could be Bakuryou Ryou! Hee. It means "good, pleasing, skilled." o_o So Bakura's a very skilled tapir.
Re: 20,000 names. It's a good site, but not always accurate. I always like to look at multiple sites before deciding definitively that a name means something.