Pronunciation of Names in Videogames – Legend of Zelda

      There is no right or wrong way to pronounce videogame names. Videogames are created by the developers, but the people who really make videogames what they are are the players. I believe that videogames are a very unique medium of entertainment because it’s such a different experience for each player, so how can we possibly say there is any one way to say the names when there isn’t any one way to play the game? That being said, I wanted to do some research and think about how these names “should” be said. What I mean by that is that I wanted to figure out which pronunciations of these names are the closest to what the developers might have intended when making them. For that I had to go to the direct Japanese and do some analysing of common sound-borrowing patterns. These pronunciations don’t reflect how I actually say them now or said them back when I first played these games (some of these names I myself am not sure if I pronounce them in a consistent way at all when talking about then), but rather what I think is the closest to the “original intention”.

Why Japanese isn’t always the best source

     Although it may be true that Japanese is the original language of these games, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best source for determining how to pronounce these names in English. Japanese often contains loan words from English. The way these words are phonetically adopted in Japanese almost always fits a regular pattern and is highly predictable if you know how to pronounce the word in English. Likewise, if you know these patterns, you can use Japanese loanwords to find out (to a certain extent) how the original English is pronounced. There are occasions, however, when these words do not fit the pattern. There are multiple reasons as to why this happens, but one of the most common is “reading-pronunciation”. This happens when a reader does not know the actual pronunciation of a word, but determines what they think it could be based on how it’s spelled.

Some examples of this are gurōbu グローブ for ‘glove’, sutajio スタジオ for ‘studio’, and sutajiamu スタジアム for ‘stadium’. These pronunciations all exhibit strange adoptions into Japanese concerning the first vowel. ‘Glove’ is borrowed with a long “ō” sound as if it rhymed with ‘stove’ (sutōbu ストーブ), instead of ‘love’ (rabu ラブ). ‘Studio’ is borrowed with a short “a”, which is often used in Japanese to approximate the vowel in ‘study’, rather than a long “ū” as in ‘student’. ‘Stadium’ is borrowed with a short ‘a’ sound as well, in this case probably trying to represent the vowel in ‘stand’, rather than a long “ē” or a diphthong “ei” as the vowel in ‘stade’. The expected forms would have been *gurabu グラブ, *suchūjio スチュージオ, and *sutējiamu ステージアム instead.

     How does this affect video games? Are these names all just made up anyway? Well yes and no. They are usually based off of something that the developers had in mind when they created them. An example is Aerith from Final Fantasy VII, who was originally transliterated into English as Aeris (Japanese borrows both “s” and “th” sounds as “s”), but the game makers stated that Aerith’s name was supposed to be based off of the word ‘earth’, so the correct transliteration should be with a “th”. Those creating the original English translation either didn’t know the intended origin of the name or made a mistake in this small aspect. Since the first versions of the game though, all the content that has come out that has Aerith in it (such as the Kingdom Hearts games) has written her name with new official spelling.

     The best example in the Zelda series is ‘Hyrule’, which in Japanese is hairaru ハイラル. The name supposedly comes from the phrase “high rule”, further backed by the kingdom of Lorule as its antithesis in A Link Between Worlds. So we would expect the pronunciation in Japanese to be hairūru ハイルール to reflect that, but instead we get hairaru ハイラル. In English of course, we know that “rule” is pronounced with a long “u” sound, but here it’s represented as if the “u” in this word were a short “uh” sound like in ‘hull’ or ‘dull’, making Hyrule “Hyrull”. Even so, for most names, treating the words as made-up English words with the Japanese as a guide to what the "original" English should be works fairly well for the most part. I will mostly use this method to determine pronunciations, as many (but not nearly all) words in Japanese entertainment are meant to sound as if they have origins in English.

  "But I don't care about those kinds of things! We'll be friends foreeever! Right?"

 

Common Names with Multiple Pronunciations

Saria: This is one of the most debated pronunciations which is why I put it first despite all the others being in alphabetical order from here on out. I’ve heard at least about four different ones: (1) SAIR-ree-ə, (2) SAH-ree-ə, (3) sə-REE-ə, and (4) SÆ-ree-ə (æ as in ‘cat’).

(1)    If we take the Japanese name as the “correct form”, this one sticks out as “incorrect”. The name in Japanese is Saria サリア with an “a” sound, so using the vowel in the name Mary (Mearī メアリー) does not seem like the intended pronunciation. SAIR-ree-ə would be Searia セアリア in Japanese.

(2)     From here on out, determining which is the “right” one is pretty difficult because Japanese only has one “a” sound that represents many sounds in English. Usually, however, the vowel in ‘father’, ‘car’, ‘palm’ is represented with a long vowel in Japanese: ā. But Saria has a short vowel, so it would appear SAH-ree-ə is not the intended form either, as that would more likely beサーリア in Japanese.

(3)    Between SÆ-ree-ə and sə-REE-ə (Maria with an S), it’s even more difficult to choose. Japanese does not stress anyone syllable over another, but instead has a pitch accent which doesn’t translate to or from English. It is more likely however, that if sə-REE-ə were the intended pronunciation, the “ee” sound would be long in Japanese as Sarīa サリーア. That being said, it does seem to resemble Maria with an S, since the Japanese name for Jesus’s mother is Maria マリア, borrowed from Latin, and it could therefore be modeled after it.

(4)    So the closest of these four to the intended pronunciation would have to be SÆ-ree-ə. The pronunciation of SÆ-ree-ə, however, does not exists in most American accents. The vowel in ‘cat’ does not appear before an “r”, and instead Americans pronounce this like an EH, making ‘marry’ and ‘merry’ homophones in most dialects. In other words, this is not an option to most Americans.

All of the above being said, this is treating the name as a supposed English name being borrowed into Japanese. Although I mentioned this was very common, there are of course times where the word is merely a Japanese word or meant to sound Japanese in origin, in which case I will follow the rules for how English borrows Japanese words, which are completely different from when Japanese borrows from English. And of course there are also cases where it’s hard to tell which the intended original language (if either of the two). If we just treat it as a Japanese name in origin, it’s hard to tell how a person with the name “Saria” would choose to Anglicize it, perhaps like sə-REE-ə to sound like Maria, or either as (2) or (4) as well, since Anglophones often take “a” as “æ” or “ah” regardless of the original vowel length (EG – “anime” and “manga” can be said with either “æ” or “ah” depending on the speaker). Treating it as English-ish in origin borrowed into Japanese (rather than Japanese borrowed into English), the intended pronunciation is more concrete, so I’ll stick to SÆ-ree-ə.

Anju: Japanese: Anju アンジュ. Closest is ÆN-joo if treated as an original English-ish name. AHN-joo is close but “ah” is typically a long vowel in Japanese, however if the name’s origin is intended to be Japanese, it might be borrowed in English with the “ah” vowel instead. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether this name is supposed to be English-sounding or Japanese-sounding or something else. Just looking at the Japanese, it looks like a Japanized version of Ange (from Angela); looking at the English, it looks like a name from Japanese or another foreign language.

Aryll: Japanese: Ariru アリル. Both Æ-rihl and ə-RIHL are close. The Japanese pitch accent cannot tell us anything about the stress accent in English, even though the pitch accent probably falls on the first syllable in this case Áriru as most loan words (katakana words) have an accent on the third to last character.

"You returned the Pocket Cucco and received Cojiro in return! He's a cucco that rarely crows!"

Cojiro: Japanese: Kojirō コジロー. This is a Japanese name which would likely be borrowed into English as either KOH-jih-roh or koh-JEE-roh. It is not Spanish, so it’s not koh-HEE-roh.

Cremia: Japanese: Kurimia クリミア. The first “i” should be long if it’s supposed to sound like “cream”, but for some reason it’s short here as if it were “ih”. I’ve never heard KRIH-mee-ə, so KREE-mee-ə is the best option as neither KREH-mee-ə nor KRAY-mee-ə match, and her name is likely related to the word “cream”.

Cucco: This is one I didn’t actually go to the Japanese for, but instead to a line in Twilight Princess. In TP, when you find the golden cucco: "Twinkle, twinkle, little Cucco... I am gold and not for you-oo..." The only way this seems to rhyme is if cucco is pronounced exactly like the real animal cuckoo, i.e. as KOO-koo. I’ve never heard this pronunciation, however. The two common pronunciations I’ve heard are KOO-koh and KUH-koh, and the former is much closer. The Japanese name is kokko コッコ and the short “o” in the first syllable points to a pronunciation like “cock-o”, which makes a lot more sense seeing as the bird resembles a chicken and not a cuckoo at all, but the English spelling doesn’t work with this pronunciation (perhaps changed because of the association of the word “cock” with male genitalia, but this is just my own speculation). But ultimately, going off the rhyme and the possible origin in the word cuckoo, KOO-koh is the best choice.

Deku: Japanese: deku デク. The closest English is DEH-koo and not DEE-koo.

Farore: Japanese: Furoru フロル. The Japanese tells us next nothing about the English name as it seems to be completely different. The “u” vowel in Japanese typically is used when there is no vowel in the English version (for most consonants anyway) and “ru” ル is used for syllable-final “l” not “r”, which is typically adopted as a long vowel or as an “a” ア. So to me, Furoru looks more like “Froll”. I have nothing to really go off for this one so it’s anyone’s guess between fə-RAWR-ree, fə-RAWR-ray, and fə-RAWR (and perhaps others but these are the one’s I’ve heard.

Fi: Japanese: Fai ファイ. FYE is closer than FEE in English.

Gerudo: Japanese: gerudo ゲルド, making gə-ROO-doh the closest, rather than jə-ROO-doh. The vowels all being short make it seem like this is not an English word as the “u” is almost always pronounced long here and final “o” is always long in English. Therefore it’s best to treat this word as Japanese in origin being borrowed into English without length being considered. If this were from an English word, it looks a lot more like the original word should’ve been “geld” with the “u” and “o” short vowels standing in for consonant clusters that Japanese does not allow for.

Girahim: Japanese: Girahimu ギラヒム. This is the first name we’ve come across now that is Sanskrit in origin, despite this actually being quite common in the Zelda series. I know very limited amounts of Sanskrit but I am familiar enough with the sound system as it has a short-long vowel system very similar to Latin (and somewhat similar to Japanese and Greek). The word giraḥ means “words” in Sanskrit, but I can’t say for sure if this name comes from that or if it’s just made to sound Sanskrit-ish. Either way, all vowels are short in the Japanese version (and possibly in Sanskrit too?) so GIH-rə-him or gih-rə-HIM are the closest. I think most people tend to say it as gih-rə-HEEM or GEE-rə-heem (I typically say it this way), but they are short “i”s rather than long ones in the Japanese, which indicate coming from an "ih" sound.

Gohma: Japanese: gōma ゴーマ. GOH-mə.

Goht: Japanese gōto ゴート. GOHT.

Hylia: Japanese: Hairia ハイリア. This means the intended pronunciation would be HYE-lee-ə, rather than HEE-lee-ə. This also makes sense when considering Hyrule, which seems to be a related word. The pronunciation of hye-LEE-ə is also close, but the second vowel is short and not long as stressing it would imply. Hylian would therefore also follow the same pattern of pronunciation.

Hyrule: Japanese: Hairaru ハイラル. See above for explanation. As both vowels are long, there is nothing to indicate where stress might fall, so either HYE-rool or hye-ROOL.

Igos du Ikana: Japanese: Igos do Ikāna イゴス・ド・イカーナ. Mostly short vowels except the second to last “a”, so the closest is probably IH-gos doo ih-KAH-nə. English "du" and Japanese "do" seem to be different words, the former from French du and the latter from French de. French "u" is a nonexistent sound in native English, so I'll stick to a typical long "oo" sound.

Kaepora Gaebora: The first syllable of both words in his name are highly debated as KAY and GAY, or KYE and GYE, but in Japanese, they are both represented with a short “e” sound Kepora Gebora ケポラゲボラ, so keh-PAWR-rə geh-BAWR-rə is closest (despite the “o”s being short, but I’ve never heard this in English pronunciations).

Kafei: Japanese: Kāfei カーフェイ. The closest is kah-FAY or KAH-fay, since the “a” is a long “ā” sound in Japanese, rather than KAY-fay, KAY-fee, kə-FAY, kə-FEE, KÆ-fay, kæ-FAY (like café) among many others. Whether the stress is on the first or second syllable is anyone’s guess however.

Koholint Island: Japanese: Kohorinto-tō コホリント島. The first part of this name almost looks like It comes from alcohol and maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be pronounced… I honestly don’t know. The last syllable is undoubtedly lihnt just like the word “lint”, but the pronunciation of the first two is highly variable. It’s hard to take this as an originally Japanese word, because we would have borrowed all the vowels into English and “r” as “r” not as as “l”; no words of Japanese origin are borrowed and made to look not Japanese. So if we take this as an originally English word, the first two syllables are short “o” sounds like in “hot”. This means it should be pronounced something like kə-HOL-lihnt, which ends up sound a lot like alcohol and alcoholic… This definitely is the closest match since the “o”s are short, but I much prefer my own pronunciation of KOH-ə-lihnt (even though this makes the h silent). I’ve also grown to really like kə-HOH-lint or KOH-hə-lihnt, which still pronounce the “h” and use long “o” sounds as we would when borrowing from Japanese, despite this not looking like a Japanese word.

 "Hey, Koume... What's that on your head?"

Kotake & Koume: The Twinrova sisters have actual Japanese names. The closest English pronunciations I have heard for Kotake コタケ is koh-TAH-kay and for Koume コウメ is koh-OO-may, rather than koh-TAYK and KOHM (or KOOM). This also models very well how these names would be loaned into English disregarding vowel length entirely.

Lanayru: Japanese: Ranēru ラネール, so lə-NAY-roo is the closest match, rather than lə-NYE-roo.

Malo, Malon, Marin: Japanese: Maro マ, Maron マロン, Marin マリン. I grouped these because they are so phonetically similar in Japanese. The short “a” sound in Japanese points to “æ” in English. So MÆ-loh, MÆ-lon (or MÆ-lən), and MÆ-rihn are the closest. Interestingly the Japanese name Maron マロン is also the Japanese word for “chestnut” from French marron, so there may be a connexion.

Navi: Japanese: Nabī ナビィ. Very similar to the Japanese word nabi ナビ (with the second vowel lengthened). This word comes from shortening “navigator” or “navigation”, so the intended pronunciation of Navi is most likely NÆ-vee rather than NAH-vee or NAY-vee. This is a good example of how Japanese borrows “æ” as a short “a”.

Nayru: Japanese: Nēruネール, so NAY-roo is the closest match, rather than NYE-roo.

Sahasrahla: Japanese: Sahasurāra サハスラーラ. From Sanskrit Sahasrāra, although I’m not sure why the “r” became “l” in English. Probably the closest is sə-həs-RAH-lə, with all the short “a”s as “ə” and the sole long “ā” as “ah”.

Skulltula: The Japanese name for Skulltulas is sutaruchura スタルチュラ which is slightly different from the English. If I had to guess what this would have been in English if the translators had stuck to the same name, it would be “Staltula” (like Stalfos + tarantula). No one debates that the first syllable is skull, however many people pronounce the rest as tuhl-ə, but the intended pronunciation, seeing as it’s based on “tarantula”, seems to be SKUHL-chʊ-lə (ʊ as in book).

Stalfos: Japanese: sutarufosu スタルフォス. Both the “a” and the “o” are short pointing to STÆL-fos as the intended pronunciation rather than STAWL-fohs (which sounds strange to me as I personally say the latter).

Tael & Tatl: The Japanese names do not seem the same as the English as they are Toreiru トレイル and Chatto チャット. The first seems like the Japanized version of “trail” and the second of “chat”. Tael, however, is an English word for a unit of weight, pronounced TAYL, which also contains the same vowel sounds as the Japanese version despite there seemingly being some extra sounds in the Japanese compared to the English. I’ve only ever heard Tatl pronounced as TÆ-təl. One more thing I wanted to point out before move on from these sibling fairies, and it’s something most people I think have noticed is that together the names are homophonous with “tattletale”, which might be what they were modeled after and why they are slightly changed from the original Japanese.

Talo, Talon, Tarin: Japanese: Taro タロ, Taron タロン, Tarin タリン. Like Malo, Malon, Marin, these three also all have “æ” and are stressed on the first syllable. TÆ-loh, TÆ-lon (or TÆ-lən), TÆ-rihn.

Termina: Japanese: Tarumina タルミナ. The Japanese name here having “ru” is strange since this usually indicates “l” like “Talmina”. We’d expect a long vowel for syllable final “r”, something like *Tāmina ターミナ instead. Either way, the word sounds a lot like terminus so it’s likely supposed to be pronounced similarly, as TUHR-mih-nə.

Volvagia: Volvagia has a really strange name in Japanese: varubajia ヴァルバジア. The first “v” and the second “v” are different in Japanese. To most Japanese ears, they are the same “b” sound and easily confused, but for some reason the first was written as a “v” (a sound not native to Japanese) and the second as a “b”, even those most speakers probably pronounce both as “b”. Even more interesting is the fact that the first vowel is “a” and not “o”. Maybe the original makers were thinking Valvagia or Vulvagia (but I can see why it was changed if the second one was the case…) when they were creating the name. This could also be a rare case of “a” representing the short “o” sound as in ‘hot’ or ‘pot’, but this is not common at all. Either way, every English pronunciation of that name I’ve heard pronounces the first syllable as vohl, so we can just ignore the Japanese there. As for the rest of the name, the short “a” for the second vowel pointing to “æ, and the “g” is represented as “j” so “gem” rather than “get”. The closest of the pronunciations I’ve heard is therefore vohl-VÆ-jee-ə, as opposed to vohl-VAH-jee-ə, vohl-VAY-jee-uh, vohl-VAH-gee-ə, vohl-VÆ-gee-ə, or vohl-VAY-gee-ə.

Other names with interesting tidbits

Bellum: Japanese: Beramū ベラムー. The last “ū” being long in the Japanese is really strange as the word “bellum” clearly has no vowel sound at all after the “m”. This kind of lengthening the last vowel isn’t entirely uncommon (like we saw with Navi’s name), but I found it interesting that it occurred with a vowel that’s not even there in the English.

Pokémon-Bombchu by Hotaru-Neko

Source: http://hotaru-neko.deviantart.com/art/Pokemon-Bombchu-62711305

Bombchu: This name is bomb + chū チュウ which comes from the Japanese onomatopoeia for the squeaking of a mouse: chūchū チュウチュウ (compare Pikachu and Raichu from Pokémon).

Gyorg: Japanese: Guyōgu グヨーグ. The Japanese version has extra unexpected “u”, despite the fact that the name seems to be from the reading gyo ギョ of the character for fish (魚).

Jabu-Jabu: Japanese: Jabujabu ジャブジャブ. This is a Japanese onomatopoeia for splashing water.

Majora: Japanese: Mujura ムジュラ. Completely different vowels from the English for some reason.

Manhandla: Japanese: Tesuchitāto テスチタート. Completely different.

Morpheel: Japanese:  Okutaīruオクタイール. The Japanese name is based off “octoeel”, while the English name is “morph” + “eel”.

Rauru: Japanese: Rauru ラウル.  The English transliterating choice is interesting here since the Japanese is a very typical way of transliterating the name Raúl, but for whatever reason they chose not to go with that.

Tingle: Japanese: Chinkuru チンクル. The Japanese names sounds more like it should be “Tinkle” rather than “Tingle”, but just the one consonant was changed.

IPA

     For my fellow linguists and for an overall summary, here’s all the names I analysed and the IPA phonetics for what I decided is the closest to the “intended pronunciations”. Parentheses means these cannot be determined as correct from the Japanese or other sources but I’ve decided to include those pronunciations here anyway. The ones that I took as Japanese-origin words or Sanskrit-origin words have the pronunciations in those languages in IPA for reference.

Saria: [ˈsæ.ɹi.ə]     ( [ˈsɑː.ɹi.ə] [səˈɹiː.ə] )

Anju: [ˈæn.dʒuː] [ˈɑːn.dʒuː]

Aryll: [ˈæ.ɹɪlˠ] [əˈɹɪlˠ]

Bombchu: [ˈbɒm.tʃuː]

Cojiro: [ˈkʰoʊ.dʒɪ.ɹoʊ] [koʊˈdʒiː.ɹoʊ] (from Japanese [ko̞.dʑi.ɽo̞ː])

Cremia: [ˈkʰɹiː.mi.ə]

Cucco: [ˈkʰuː.koʊ]

Deku: [ˈdɛ.kuː] (from Japanese [de̞.kɯᵝ])

Farore:     ( [fəˈɹɔː.ɹi] [fəˈɹɔː.ɹeɪ] [fəˈɹɔɚ] )

Fi: [faɪ]

Gerudo: [ɡəˈɹuː.doʊ] (from Japanese [ɡe̞.ɽɯᵝ.do̞])

Girahim: [ˈɡɪ.ɹə.hɪm] [ɡɪ.ɹəˈhɪm] (perhaps from Sanskrit [ɡi.rəx] + im?)

Gohma: [ˈɡoʊ.mə]

Goht: [ˈɡoʊt]

Hylia: [ˈhaɪ.li.ə]

Hyrule: [ˈhaɪ.ɹuːl] [haɪˈɹuːl]

Igos du Ikana: [ˈɪ.ɡɒs duː ɪˈkʰɑː.nə]

Kaepora Gaebora: [kɛˈpʰɔː.ɹə ɡɛˈbɔː.ɹə]

Kafei: [kɑːˈfeɪ] [ˈkɑː.feɪ]

Koholint: [kəˈhɒ.lɪnt̚]

Kotake: [koʊˈtʰɑː.keɪ] (from Japanese [ko̞.ta̱.ke̞])

Koume: [koʊˈuː.meɪ] (from Japanese [ko̞.ɯᵝ.me̞])

Lanayru: [ləˈneɪ.ɹuː]

Malo: [ˈmæ.loʊ]

Malon: [ˈmæ.lɒn] [ˈmæ.ln̩]

Marin: [ˈmæ.ɹɪn]

Navi: [ˈnæ.vi]

Nayru: [ˈneɪ.ɹuː]

Sahasrahla: [sə.həsˈɹɑː.lə] (from Sanskrit [sə.hə.srɑː.rə])

Skulltula: [ˈskʌlˠ.tʃʊ.lə]

Stalfos: [ˈstælˠ.fɒs]

Tael: [ˈtʰeɪlˠ]

Tatl: [ˈtʰæ.tl̩ˠ]

Talo: [ˈtʰæ.loʊ]

Talon: [ˈtʰæ.lɒn] [ˈtʰæ.ln̩]

Tarin: [ˈtʰæ.ɹɪn]

Termina: [ˈtʰɝ.mɪ.nə]

Volvagia: [voʊlˠˈvæ.dʒi.ə]

I’m sure I’ve said this a million times already. But these are not the only ways to pronounce these names, and I’m not saying they are better than any other way of pronouncing. Hell, a lot of these sound really strange to me (like Koholint and Stalfos). This was just a little experiment of mine.