Just FYI, the native Italian Paolo Greco borrowed my French copy of Ryuutama last night to review spells as we were playing in English at a tavern in Tokyo, ordering in Japanese. He is the Inception of language, without the shitty ending.

What J. Walton said about “choosing names that are easier for foreigners to say”. That’s ultimately why I went with Phoenix Sect for a game translation project rather than Hou-ouh-shuu (mind you, NOT Hou-oh-shu, that means something totally different) (and that ultimately meant I had to go with English for the other two sects, even though I liked the phonetic pull of Bokusen and Myouren; though they literally came out to Ebon Mountain and Bright Lotus, so that was cool too).

What Ron Edwards said too; there’s a weird kind of romanticism about foreign names especially Chinese and Japanese ones. And yeah, that fight is between Wisteriafield (Fujiwara) and Palaceborn (Miyamoto).

And also what Matthew Sanchez said about What Names Mean in a culture. The greatest anime ever, 12 Kingdoms, is set in a kind of fantasy analogue ancient China, and they try to play true to form with how names work, how old kingdoms and bureaucracy worked; there was a filler episode between two arcs which was basically “Explain a bit about history and the kingdom”, which was basically a mind-numbingly bewildering cruise through totally alien organizations, groups, namings etc. It was really cool from a cultural perspective (like how everything has three names: original, polite/public, official, and perhaps even posthumous), but at the same time like looking at life on another planet.