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Yugioh Name
Meanings:
Yo peeps! This section is brought to you exclusively by Tuulikki,
who did extensive research on the Japanese names of Yugioh characters and
decided to share her findings. It was first posted on ff.net and
since then I've added some info on the English names too. So without further ado: THE
MEANINGS OF THE YU-GI-OH! NAMES
Mutou: Written with two kanji: 'warrior' and 'wisteria'
(wisteria�s some kind of a climbing plant). The
wisteria is a symbol for a number of things, including humility,
generosity, prosperity and beauty.
Yami: dark
Yuugi: game
Sugoroku: a child�s dice game (^__^)
Simon: 'He who hears'. Hebrew in origin.
Solomon: 'Peaceful'. Hebrew in origin.
Kaiba: kai = sea; ba = horse. According to Japanese legend, a sea horse
is a baby dragon. ^_^ You just need to wait a coupla thousand years
for it to grow up. "Tatsunootoshigo" is the actual
word for seahorse, and it's translated to "the dropping child
of a dragon�".
Seto: �Turmoil�. This was a little problematic...
�Seto� is written with two kanji, first of which (�se�)
means �current; torrent; rapids; shallows; shoal�. The latter is
the mark, which means man or person or people, normally read as hito,
nin, or jin. I read from some web page that seto means turmoil, but
I don�t remember where... Many reviewers confirmed this.
Many people seem
to identify Seto with the Egyptian god Set/Seth (patron of Wind,
Storm, Chaos, Evil, Darkness, Strength, War, Conflict). Now the very
interesting thing about Set is that although he was stormy and dark,
he was still considered to be a good guy and a defender of Ra (Sun
God). Some even say he was given equal status to Horus (patron of
the Living Pharaoh)... ...Or at least he was, for a while...
Sometime around the 26th (unsure) dynasty he went "splat"
as far as the people's favor went, and suddenly he was The Bad Guy
(pretty much synonymous with "evil"). He betrayed his
brother Osiris and claimed the throne for himself... yadayadayada...
and I'm thinking "Wow! That's what Seto's supposed to do!
(Except that he's Yami's cousin and wasn't quite as successful with
the whole hostile take-over plot)". In any case, the whole good
guy turning into bad guy angle was certainly similar. ^_^ Puts
everything into perspective, ne?
I've forgotten who, but someone mailed me and said that Set actually
isn't the brightest of the bunch. Many times he gets duped by the
other gods (...what does that say about Osiris?!).
Mokuba: wooden horse
Gozaburo: �Go� means hardness, I don�t know about the
rest...
Bakura: �Baku� means tapir (a
nocturnal hoofed forest-dwelling mammal of Central and South America
and Southeast Asia), and the kanji which is used
for writing �ra�-part means good (although it is normally read
as �ryou�).
Ryou: finish; completion; understanding
Amane (Ryou�s dead little sister): Written with two kanji,
�heaven� and �sound�
Jounouchi: This is written with three kanji. First of them
means castle (normal reading: �shiro�), the second means
�this� (�kore�), and the last one (�uchi�) means inside.
Is this �inside this castle� or what? At least this made it
clear for me how this name is pronounced. (You know, �u� is
often used in Japanese to mark a long �o� vowel, and this is
probably what it means in Jou, but later in the name this is not the
case since �no� and �uchi� are written with different
kanji.)
Katsuya: This is written with two kanji, first of them means
�subdue� (normally read �koku�) and the other is �a sum of
money� (normal reading: �nari�) I don�t think this means
anything as a name....
Shizuka: quiet, peaceful
Serenity: peaceful disposition. ^_^
Honda: (a car! no, just kidding... ^_^) 'hon': origin, main,
'da': rice field
Hiroto: I don�t know about this. For some reason it was
written with katakana�s, which are used for foreign names.
Tristan: Welsh for 'clamor' and... something for 'sorrow'. In Arthurian legend, Tristan was a brave
knight who fell in love with the Lady Isolt/Isolde of
Ireland/Cornwall. To abbreviate
the story, he was torn from his love and ended up marrying another
woman (incidentally also named Isolt). However Tristan was
wounded/poisoned in battle and sent a messenger to his true love in hopes
that she could cure him. Isolt (the wife), out of jealously, told
him Isolt of Ireland (the lover) had refused to come. Tristan died
of heartbreak. When Isolt of Ireland came, she saw her love was
dead, embraced him and sighed, dying as well. Her uncle buried her
and Tristan side by side and on their graves, a rose tree and a vine
plant reached for each other and intertwined. What does this have to
do with Yugioh? Nothing. ^_^ I just love this
story. Most people agree that it's meant to parallel the
love between Gwen and Lancelot.
Otogi: �keeping another company�; �attending (upon)�
Ryuuji: ryuu: dragon, ji: child
Devlin: Celtic in origin meaning 'brave'. **arches an
eyebrow** iiinnteresting.
Duke: Latin for 'leader'. Look it up in the English
dictionary and it'll tell you 'high-ranking nobleman', 'ruler of
principality'.
DragonLadyRM's confirmed that "duke" is an Americanism for
fists and punching. It's also a nickname fir John Wayne (cowboy
stereotype).
Mazaki: ma: �just; right; pure; genuine; true�, saki:
�small peninsula�.
Anzu: apricot, apricot tree
Kujaku: peacock
Mai: dance, dancing.
Amanda thinks it's a pun on "my", which works with her dub
last-name "Valentine". Therefore we can call her "my
valentine" 'cause she's the prettiest girl on she show. ^_^ Or
at least the most kick-ass one...
Yami Malik has also taken to calling her "my/Mai dear" in
the dub.
Crawford: 'Form the crow's ford'. English in origin. **arches
an eyebrow** Exactly what that means I have no idea. Other
sources say it means 'a sheltering place for castle'.
Pegasus: 'winged horse' in Greek mythology. Frankly I have no
idea why they decided to name him that, unless it has anything to do
with the fact that Pegasus was born out of Medusa's blood? Medusa?
Eye? I'm grasping at straws here...
Maximillian: English in origin meaning 'the greatest'.
**snicker** Now that I understand. Max certainly had the ego for
it.
Hawkins: No idea what it means... but I did dig up my Wheel
of Time series just to make sure... turns out there's a
legendary king in that series by the name of Artur Hawkwing. Just a
coincidental similarity, I think. -_-()
Rebecca: 'captivating/knotted cord'. Hebrew in origin.
Arthur: Celtic for 'noble'.
Rashid: 'Integrity'. Arabic origin. Integrity
can be defined as "possession of firm principles" or
"wholeness/completeness". Apparently it's also Turkish for
"righteous" (**arches a skeptical eyebrow**) and Swahili
for "wise man"? **blink**
Odion: 'Born of twins'. Egyptian in origin. **grins**
Interesting name. Care to speculate the connotations of it?
Ishtar: also known as 'Astarte/Ashtar/Inanna'. Babylonian
goddess of love. She also seems to be the Semitic/Egyptian/Greek
goddess of fertility, love and war. **is confused** Sometimes she's
said to be the same as Isis. Other times she's identified with Anat,
who supposedly protects the monarch during combat. **swirly eyes**
Isis: 'Supreme goddess' in Egyptian. Isis embodies the throne.
If you're gonna think 'head female honcho' as far as Egyptian deities
go, Isis is your gal. She wife of Osiris and mother of Horus in
Egyptian mythology. She's the Goddess of Life, Queen of the Gods and
was pretty much worshiped universally throughout Egypt.
Malik:
New-ish: I
thought Malik meant "master" in Arabic, but Pharaohness
Of Valley Of The Dead says it means
"king".
Akina Tori says 'Malak' means angel. XD
It would've been scary if Malik meant 'angel'...
Then, I was wondering whether the Japanese versions of Isis and
Malik�s names mean something. They don�t, but "ishizue" means
foundation stone. New:
Miriam says "Mar" means "bitter" in Hebrew,
which may have some relevance to "Marik", but maybe not.
XD
Here are some things that came up in the reviews (and an answer to
one review, I had this posted too, but then... *sigh*):
The names "Yuugi" and "Jounouchi" are taken from
the two syllables of the word "yuujou", which means
friendship or fellowship. Thanks to Indigo Tantarian for this piece
of info. I think that�s... well, kind of cute. ^__^
Meloncrisp: You�re right. �Ta� is a rice field. I just
was kind of careless when I wrote Honda�s part... You see, his
name consists of couple of those few kanji I do know, and I was more
interested to find out what the others mean, and so I was kind of
careless with that�
About your question (if I understood it right� ^^;;): If a word
which begins with t, p, k or s is the second syllable (or later) of
a compound word it usually changes so that it begins with d, b, g or
z, in other words, voiceless consonants turn to voiced. This happens
in many YGO names: Honda (ta � da), Mazaki (saki � zaki), Gozaburo
(saburo � zaburo) etc. I hope you understood, I�m not sure if I
explained it that clearly...
There are lots of homophones in Japanese, and this seems to cause a
little confusion. For example �seto� means also channel or
strait, and �zaki� means blossom, but they are written with
different kanji than in Yugioh-names and are therefore different
words. Still, if someone just says that his name is Seto, I guess
that without knowing how it�s written people could think it means
channel...
If you have comments about these, or if you spot some mistakes (ye-ees,
I guess that's possible... ^^;), e-mail
me!
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