Thursday DE: What’s my name

[bjornwilde]

What does your pup’s name mean? Does it have any reluctance to canon? 

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[alongfallfromgrace]

Wei Wuxian: His courtesy name, Wuxian, means “to be free of envy and aspire to greater heights; not be misguided by honorary reputation and personal gain”. Basically he got that name as a young teenager and then ran with it as his entire life motto. Boy does not do anything by halves, no. But here's a post with a more in-depth look at all of his names, because they're all relevant, the author hid nothing with this name.

Klaus: Klaus' name means 'Victory of the People', which might just be funny until you remember Grace the Robot Mom who basically treats Dear Old Reggie like a god named the kids, so while you hope that it's a reference back to the family Klaus was bought from, as a kindness, it's more likely this was one more layer in the 'you're a superhero, deal with it' trauma. Whoops.

Cecil: Means 'blind' or 'sixth'. I've seen quite a few fanfics running off the 'blind' meaning - usually with Cecil being actually blind except for a third-eye sight sort of thing, or just being actually blind and going off of other people's description of things, which explains his wardrobe so much. No blatant connection to canon yet, except for maybe being blind to his own past?

Jon: A shortening of Jonathan, meaning God has shown favor, or Gift from God. Which, given the position of the Fears in this canon, means eventually Jon will be staring into the camera Office-style and cussing. Um. Sorry, Jon.

[darkeryetdarker]

Gaster: This is a bit tricky. His canon name is W.D. Gaster. The WD is thought to stand for Wingdings, which is the font used in the secret Entry Number 17 in Undertale, assumed to be Gaster speaking. Gaster may be related to the Aster font, or possibly related to the word "ghost" or "ghastly".

Urania: Her name comes from the Greek word Ouranious, meaning "heavenly", fitting for a goddess of the study of the heavens. Her great-grandfather, Uranus, has the same root word in his name (fitting, as he was the god of the sky).

Phoenix: His original Japanese name is Naruhodo Ryuichi. "Naruhodo" means "I see" or "I understand" - this was changed to Wright to preserve the pun, sounding like "Right" as in, "Right, I see." (Wright is also an old word refering to one who fixes things, which is quite fitting as well, but that was likely unintentional.)
According to TvTropes, Ryuichi was picked as a shout out to Yellow Magic Orchestra, and also because the "ryu" part is written with the kanji for dragon, and his hair resembles dragon spikes. His name was changed to Phoenix, because no matter how bad things get, he always manages to bounce back and rise from the ashes - and, his hair spikes also can resemble a bird's wings.

Lup: Her name was originally going to be Chalupa, keeping with the Tex-Mex theme of her brother, Taako. However, Griffin (the DM) was worried that that name might be taken as racist, so it was shortened to Lup. Many fans, including myself, choose to take it as her deadname.

i am sorry this is so very long

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Digimon Adventure likes its meaningful names, with varying degrees of subtlety from Taichi and Hikari Yagami, literally 'Great #1 of the Eight Gods' and 'Light of the Eight Gods' respectively; to Mimi, which is an actual name meaning 'beautiful seed' or 'beautiful dream' (fitting for the Chosen of Earth and Sleep) but which in this case is spelled as '33' because it looks cuter and more aesthetic, indicating that yes, her entire family is Like That.

Yamato's name is actually written phonetically in katakana, meaning that it's just sound without the meaning that a kanji spelling provides, because he's named after Yamato Takeru, and different sources provide different spellings of Yamato Takeru's name (with different meanings as a result).

So, depending on which spelling of Yamato Takeru's name you want to apply, if you were to write Yamato's name in kanji you'd spell it either [yama][he] 'mountain gate' or [jishi][to] 'sword of sunlight.'

But the fact that he and his brother Takeru are both named after Yamato Takeru is in itself fairly meaningful: Yamato Takeru (or, in one telling of the story, just Takeru, with Yamato as a region marker instead of part of the name) was in legend a name passed down from one strongest warrior to the next, determined by whoever killed the previous holder of the name, with the last bearer of it being Prince Osu, a King Arthur esque figure whose love of fighting and whose desire to earn back the respect of his father leads him at first to great glories, but eventually to ruin, as he gradually earns the ire of the gods more and more, until he's eventually cursed with disease and dies.

The stories of YT-Osu are interesting in part because they're ancient propaganda, commissioned by Empress Genmei as a small part of a broader propaganda project, intended to effectively 'reserve' the title of Yamato Takeru within the imperial family (as YT-Osu is never killed, and so it's never passed on) and give an air of delegitimacy to anyone trying to use it, especially in the then-rebellious Izumo region (which is also the region that Yamato's family comes from). Torishi-Kaya, the man Osu apparently kills to become YT, actually wasn't born until 300 years after the historical Osu died.


Yam's surname, Ishida, literally means 'rocky rice paddy' or 'rice field on a mountain,' and is a direct counter to his brother's surname, Takaishi, which means 'rice field below a mountain.'

But we also know from its spelling that it's indicating a direct connection to the Ishida Clan, who were bottom-rung samurai who very briefly came to prominence during the reign of Hideyoshi, only to eventually be disgraced and splintered once Hideyoshi died -- there was a war for succession between Ieyasu and Hideyoshi's infant son, and the Ishida Clan sided with the infant instead of the most ruthlessly effective military leader in Japanese history, with about as much success and as much 'Hideyoshi's child died horribly in the end' as you'd imagine.