Japanese Character Names

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Earthshine
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Postby Earthshine » 9 years ago

"Chan" ちゃん is an honorific typically used for girls or as a cute honorific for young persons of any gender, or by young persons among each other to others. A good English equivalent would be as Fauna said "Little Amanda" or "Little Mike". So yes his name could be Chitan-Chan...

I thought that Chitan might have been an elemental name and was just about to look it up before I saw your post, Tetsuwan. I also thought furthermore that it might have been a sound effect :lol:

So I guess his name IS Chitan... though tan/タン is an honorific (although uncommon).

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Postby Windswept Cloak » 9 years ago

"Tetsuwan Penguin" wrote:One thing I often wonder is how were the character names actually pronounced. Astros name in the Japanese language was "Atom", but it was actually pronounced "Atomu" most of the time. In fact, most of the Japanese names were represented in English in a modified form with the wrong pronunciation.

The best example is Cobalt. The Japanese word is actually Kobaruto, being a borrowed word it is written as コバルト. Funny thing, it took me a while to notice the "elemental" pattern Tezuka used for naming Atoms siblings.

Astro girl (UGH!), was of course, Uran in the Japanese. This is short for Uranium, although I have NEVER heard her called that in the anime. In fact, her name is not pronounced with the English "U" vowel sound, but rather more like 'OO-RON'.

Then there is Chi-tan. His name means Titanium, and the romanization is often written without the '-'. In the anime I hear the name pronounced not with the English "i" vowel sound, but rather as "Chee-Tin".

I suspect most of the other names are in fact different from the way we know them. For example "Acetylene Lamp" is surely the English translation of the Japanese name, which I have never heard. Same for Ham Egg and Skunk (though "Kusai" is surly the romanization of the actual Japanese name, though maybe not pronounced the way it looks).

Does anyone have more information?


Kusai
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I joined this forum in late 2013 when I was 15 going on 16. Ignore my oldest posts, they embarrass me so much that I've considered permanantly leaving the forum more than once. I've grown out of my fangirling phase over Black Jack, Atom and Uran ages ago but the memories still embarrass me at times... :unsure: Though, I try to be more open-minded about it and accept it as an "interesting stage of my life". :tezuka:

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SuwaHana
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Postby SuwaHana » 9 years ago

Not sure if I mentioned this already, but the -tan in Chi-tan's name is the other half of the pun. "Chitan" is part of the word Titanium, while "-tan" in itself doubles as an honorific (usually used for exceedingly cute people or idols).

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Tetsuwan Penguin
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Postby Tetsuwan Penguin » 9 years ago

"SuwaHana" wrote:Not sure if I mentioned this already, but the -tan in Chi-tan's name is the other half of the pun. "Chitan" is part of the word Titanium, while "-tan" in itself doubles as an honorific (usually used for exceedingly cute people or idols).


I'm sure Tezuka had the name operating on several levels here (he was rather clever after all), but my point was that it IS an "elemental" name based on element #22.
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astro-boy-2003
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Postby astro-boy-2003 » 9 years ago

I'm from Germany. We say all names just like in japanese. So we don't need to change names.


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