Post by bishopcruz on Jan 1, 2009 16:22:06 GMT -5
There are several references in baby name dictionaries to the name Reah. It's not common, but it exists:
www.parenting.com/baby-names/girls/Reah
www.babynology.com/meaning-reah-f27.html
There are also numerous sites identifying it as an alternate spelling of the name Rhea or Ria.
Yeah, it took me a while to find it, most times google would ask if I was looking for Rhea. It is EXTREMELY uncommon. In either case my biggest issue with it is pronunciation, also the problem that exists with Leah.
It's hard to tell of Falcom was looking to name her after Zeus' mother or not, but the pronunciation makes me think not, then again, they are weird like that sometimes.
As for McGuire, MAKUGAIA is actually consistent with that name - the Japanese are notorious for simplifying Romanizations involving uses of the letter "u" in "qu" or "gu" or other similar combinations. "Squall" in FF8, for example, is SUKO-RU in the original katakana, but no one ever suggested naming him "Skull".
The joys of Katakana. And hey, I think it would have been AWESOME to name Squall Skull!
And I'm a notorious stickler for accurately translating katakana names, so you'll have to forgive me... I don't like making assumptions as to what a name was SUPPOSED to be, when the name is obviously NOT that. Solomon is and always has been written as "SOROMON" in Japanese, since Christianity first made its way into Japan, yet Falcom purposefully chose NOT to use that, which suggests that that's NOT what they intended it to be.
Hey, in my way I am too, I just look at it from the angle of trying to map it to correct sounding foreign words, or at least ones that can be both acceptable and not be too weird.
Something like Saloman might be a happy medium, or Saluman could work too. I think that at the very least they were trying to have something close to the sound of Solomon.
As I said before, I think that figuring out the correct way to spell out these katakana names is more an art than a science, and there is always going to be a bit of personal preference involved.
I agree with you on Lair/Reah, however. I honestly think Lea would be the best possible Romanization of the name, as it's an existing name with the proper pronunciation and a certain sense of exoticness to it:
www.thinkbabynames.com/meaning/0/Lea
However, I wanted to keep consistent with previous translations of Ys games, to preserve the "legacy", as it were... so my choices were limited to Lair and Reah (or Leah, since that's what was used in the Ys anime, but that's a different name - different pronunciation, and different official Romanization as well). And Lair is a terrible, terrible name.
-Tom
www.thinkbabynames.com/meaning/0/Lea
However, I wanted to keep consistent with previous translations of Ys games, to preserve the "legacy", as it were... so my choices were limited to Lair and Reah (or Leah, since that's what was used in the Ys anime, but that's a different name - different pronunciation, and different official Romanization as well). And Lair is a terrible, terrible name.
-Tom
Eh, Lair ain't so bad, but what are you going to do? I do wonder about Falcom's decision to choose Reah, and whether she was supposed to have been named after the titan. It can be hard as balls to figure out Falcom's exact intentions sometimes, I mean how long did everyone thing that it was the Noble District of Toal as opposed to the Noble District of Thor.
Another point in the favor of Luther as opposed to Luta is the issue of Thor himself. It SHOULD be SO-A, but instead it is TO-RU. They tend to follow slightly different rules than the norm when putting names into Katakana.