Methinks it's time for a poll.
Jul. 20th, 2009 01:18 pm[Poll #1432144]
ETA: livejournal post where you can see the poll!
If I were a better person, I would be distinguishing between the just plain Did Not Do the Research linguistic sins ("Jacuzzi Splot") versus the Chalk This One Up to Good Old-Fashioned Linguistic Barriers names ("Gopher").* But I'm not.
Anyway, feel free to add your own nominations in the comments. Requirements: It must be a totally awesome, complex, fascinating, dramatically "heavy" character who is saddled with a name that makes it difficult or nearly impossible for non-Japanese speakers to take said character seriously.
* I'm sure that, for Ohkubo's intended audience of Japanese speakers, "Gopher" is quite the brilliant name. It's a double-whammy Biblical pun (animal theme + "gopher wood") plus a sly linguistic nod to modern office slang. Unfortunately, the word "gopher" just has extraordinarily silly conotations for English speakers. And even more unfortunately, it sounds exactly like the word for "waffles" to, oh, anybody who speaks a Romance language. Which, yes, of course - I know, you know, we all know that Ohkubo isn't writing for an international audience, he's writing for his Japanese audience - but still. Unfortunate linguistic coincidences are LULZ no matter where they come from.
ETA: livejournal post where you can see the poll!
If I were a better person, I would be distinguishing between the just plain Did Not Do the Research linguistic sins ("Jacuzzi Splot") versus the Chalk This One Up to Good Old-Fashioned Linguistic Barriers names ("Gopher").* But I'm not.
Anyway, feel free to add your own nominations in the comments. Requirements: It must be a totally awesome, complex, fascinating, dramatically "heavy" character who is saddled with a name that makes it difficult or nearly impossible for non-Japanese speakers to take said character seriously.
* I'm sure that, for Ohkubo's intended audience of Japanese speakers, "Gopher" is quite the brilliant name. It's a double-whammy Biblical pun (animal theme + "gopher wood") plus a sly linguistic nod to modern office slang. Unfortunately, the word "gopher" just has extraordinarily silly conotations for English speakers. And even more unfortunately, it sounds exactly like the word for "waffles" to, oh, anybody who speaks a Romance language. Which, yes, of course - I know, you know, we all know that Ohkubo isn't writing for an international audience, he's writing for his Japanese audience - but still. Unfortunate linguistic coincidences are LULZ no matter where they come from.
