I'm amazed to see such a disaster occurring in the comments section here (lol). I chose Ulonaari ("ooh-loh-NAH-ree") because that one, out of all of them, called to me the most. That and Yuuta, but Ulonaari won out :). I would prefer not to have another "Z" pet though!
I was glad to see lots of X, Q, and U options since that's what we still need to finish alphabet. Even though we don't need another Z - I'm not too sad to see Zentu winning ^-^
Randomness... I just learned that Tanooki (from mario kart) means racoon dog. So cute hugs
Thank you so much for what you said. I have been getting quite irritated with how quickly people are getting offended by this just because their favorite isn't winning, or any of their other reasons. I think you summed up my own thoughts quite well that I myself was unsure how to put into words coherent enough to make a statement here.
I myself feel there are only about 2-3 names on the poll that most users will be able to easily remember how to spell. And like you said, it would be a nightmare to price check or search for any items relating to this pet with the more complicated spellings. Sure some people here will attack on this saying "well you arent trying or willing to try" but while some would have no problems with the other spellings, a lot here would. For one thing, there are a ton of kids who play this site as well as an older audience and I think it is best to have a spelling that all ages of players can have a reasonably easy time to spell and remember.
I myself picked "Zentu" for that reason as well as I honestly loved the rhythm and sound of it the best. It felt to me like it had a feeling that matched the sort of pet we are getting. Sadly I didn't get to now the meaning behind the name before voting, and still don't, but I'm sure it was nicely researched all the same.
Though I will agree with you, that I too feel rather disappointed in the contradiction between those two statements from the staff.. It's like they wanted to not have the direct meanings, but then kinda, well for lack of a better phrasing "sold out" and went against that. But at the same time, people are entitled to change their minds on things, but I completely understand the disappointment too. I kind of sit on both sides on this really. I typically try to stay fairly neutral if I can.
Overall though, I agree that I think we all need to chill out and respect each others differences in opinions, likes, and dislikes. If we all had the same opinions and whatnot, we'd live in a really boring world after all. Our differences are what makes the world interesting. ^^
That vs This
is really kind of sad and irritating. Many people took things like syllables and sounds that have a less-direct word for word meaning (especially since as rightfully points out they're often shared with variable meanings) and were more symbolic, to try to match the spirit of the 2nd quote.
Then you come and pick some of the most word-for-word names and give the first quote....
P.s. 'a non-Asian choice' doesn't have to be Dreamphant or w/e. Many people created names that would fit in with the East Asian theme on looks and even pronunciation, without actually being Asiatic-language inspired.
Can you really blame people for wanting a memorable name? You've got a primarily western audience, many of whom probably aren't familiar with Chinese/Japanese linguistics. I still see people misspelling Shengui Guo. This pet name is going to appear on hundreds of items, and you're going to need to remember it any time you want to check plushie prices or look up what colors this pet comes in. If you can't remember how to spell it, you're going to have problems.
And that's not to mention the handful of other legitimate reasons people may be favoring one name over another, that have nothing to do with it just being "the easiest to pronounce".
Let's try not to attack or shame people for their choices here, ok?
Ahh, so the meaning is as pretty as the word's pronunciation. :D Thanks!
Idk if anyone noticed the etymology in my post on the original thread (and by others in the comments here) but Zentu certainly was /researched/. I'm starting to rage a little that people assume it's being voted for because it's the easiest pronunciation.
And so everyone picks the one thats easiest to pronounce without even trying! XD sarcasm
hehee no im not offended by your comment, no worries! Menghua means a lot of things depending on how you write it - but yes i intended it to mean 'dreams of flowers', and can also be translated as 'dream language' (sleep talk). the original 'hua' which i took it for has no actual English translation, though it can be loosely interpreted as flower or China c:
I'll admit I picked Yuuta because I'm Starmyu trash. But now I see it matches this pet fairly well.
Vote Yunmei.
It's the best choice for YU and ME.
O jeez, I'm so sorry, , you said please don't bring it up anymore, and I totally glazed over that part. I'm sorryyyy. I'm still curious, but I understand if you don't want to answer!
Too bad foul language wouldn't be allowed in the description for the item. "It's Brittany, b**ch."
May I ask what Menghua means? I voted for that one because I thought it sounded absolutely beautiful.
I don't see a problem in the mixing and matching of different asian languages in the name... Shengui Guo is a world loosely based and inspired by different asian countries, so why not the names as well? And while the names bear a resemblance to real life asian languages, they are not actually intended to mean anything. I mean certainly there are some names that might have a different meaning in another language if you pronounce it a certain way, but that goes for almost every single name out there, language is such a varied and diverse thing.
I also lurked the thread where the names were suggested and many users gave brilliant and thoughtful reasons for their suggestions, some even did lots of research :D I highly doubt any of these were picked simply because they sounded 'exotic'. It's just unfortunate that there was no space to add in all the meanings beside the suggested names.
(I'm chinese and I am so happy to see east asian inspired pet/names, really bummed with the complaints about having too many 'oriental' sounding choices :( You do you, subeta)
Thank you for responding and explaining the process that you guys went through to choose these names, and I believe you have the best intentions. Again, this isn't a great offense, and I understand that the staff took care when choosing the top 10 names. I've already done my best to try to explain why picking names based just on how they sound feels wrong to some of us, so I'll leave the discussion here.
I'm afraid I don't know how else to explain it any better if my post doesn't help explain it.
That's actually hilarious. Maybe not for a pet, but I'd love a minion named Brittany. xD
(I can only speak as to the Chinese names, which are, yes, over-represented, and I know my concerns are somewhat orthogonal to parts of this debate, but I would prefer staff to not mandate a set of meanings bc I'm not sure there was a cultural context that some of the names could be removed from? I agree in general, and obvs. wrt to the unintended meanings, but specifically, no one would put cloud and beautiful together like that. I would cringe more knowing that there was a pet that was just 'air' 'elephant', w/o dealing with the whole ~chi concept. That'd feel more like the mix and match tattoo, and I already have to pretend otherwise with the incredibly direct Shengui guo.) And yes, 'chi' is a completely different syllable from 'qi' in pinyin, but the first sound of cheese is closer than what they wrote in the poll -- consider the Chi of Chicago, which is less like the mandarin chi or qi than 'Xi'.
I'm of East Asian descent and also not understanding what's problematic about this.
I really appreciate the inclusion of the userbase in naming this pet, and I think Shengui Guo is great in general.
Well said, Rah.
Can we have a red, white, and blue pet named Brittany to even out the offended people (Sounds like it might be "BRIT"ish (YASSS!), did I offended the whole English speaking population of Subeta? yet? -backpat-
Let's just name it Elephant and no-one gets offended
I'm incredibly apologetic that it came off that way! The meanings were not included in the poll mainly because they didn't fit. (Unless you meant in the news post?) They were available in the thread, (although I admit that's a tedious thing to search though, having done it myself) and a user has posted them in these comments too. I simply left them out to keep things concise! We went through each suggestion in the poll, checked with someone who spoke the languages used (obviously they don't speak all world languages, so if they mean something else in another language or if our speaker missed a translation based on phonetics we apologise for that!) - we also did a fair bit of research to check that these were names inspired by the cultures that inspired Shengui Guo, and didn't mean anything obviously offensive (like...slurs and such, although again that's hard to check in EVERY language)
We wanted for this pet that the name be inspired by and connected to East Asian cultures instead of being another American English word mixed up. We didn't want to call this pet the Eledream or Teleifant or something similar, it was a good opportunity to have the petname work with Shengui Guo's established inspirations. We absolutely care about how these suggestions were put together and the cultures that they came from. But we ALSO want to feel they're right for the pet. We picked these 10 names because their meanings AND the sounds of the names together worked for us. (And by 'worked for us' I mean that they inspired us, they are names which help create the pet's personality, and they felt at home in Shengui Guo)
We want to be representative and not offend other cultures, but we also don't want to erase them out of fear of doing something wrong. I'd rather we made some little mistakes and learned from them instead of not trying at all.
2609 votes so far, whoa!
You're awesome, my first thought was to do the same thing. ^_^ Thank you for posting that!
This was difficult! :/ None of them were fantastically perfect but not many were terrible... I can't unsee Utah... so yeah. LOL I ended up over thinking it- looking at the meanings from the board/internet, looking at the words with inevitable item names, narrowing it down, ugh clicks randomly lol :/
for people who mentioned that Menghua is sleep-talking rather than dreams of flowers, i'm just here to say that the actual chinese writing of the name which i took it from is neither of those. ?? but thanks for the assumptions. i used to be teased as a kid because my name written in different strokes is "vegetable farm" so please dont yall bring it up anymore.
Thanks for this opportunity, this has been very interesting to experience.
I'm overall happy with Shengui Guo's design. Drawing inspiration from multiple cultures is fine in itself; it's what this poll suggests that's problematic.
A little more explanation now that I'm gathered my thoughts better: I'd be a lot more comfortable if the meanings behind the names were included in the poll. It seems like a minor difference, but if they were included, we would then not be making decision solely based on how the names sound, but also on how much we like the meanings that inspired them. Through understanding, we show respect to the cultures when utilizing elements from them. Without these explanations, the average user can't tell what the names mean or which culture(s) inspired them, thus enforcing the idea that all Asian languages are just one homogeneous exotic-sounding mega-language. This poll is saying "we don't care what they mean or which culture they're from, we just want to use them because how pretty the sounds are". Hence my discomfort. It's not simply that the names were from different cultures that's the issue. It's also how the names were stripped of their cultural contexts.
I know this is a fairly nuanced point. But many of these small mistakes can add up and eventually make an environment unfriendly to groups of people. So I simply want the staff to be aware, and be more considerate moving forward.
tl:dr: When you use something from culture(s), it's more respectful if you understand and explain what/how you used it. Thanks for reading and responding politely and thoughtfully!
I went with Zentu because it seemed the simplest and most "subeta", I guess? Many of the suggestions didn't seem to fit well next to existing pets or even the other Shengui Guo names. Dara, Jogoh, Som, and Ujin are all pretty simple. Zasaba follows basic English sounds.
And as someone who's bilingual and has dabbled in several languages, I'm pretty dubious about the accuracy of both the name meanings and pronunciations. Google Translate doesn't give you intonation, or alternate meanings, or slang meanings, or anything else. (For all any of us know, Qiseng is some sort of horrible slur in Lao or something.) It just seems to me sort of like a white person getting a kanji tattoo because it's "pretty".
-writes in bakubob as my vote- :D
I do not agree or oppose with the idea of mixing different eastern asian cultural elements in the poll, but I just wanted to state that the Staff has previously mentioned that they took/take inspiration from many of these cultures to make the land of Shengui Guo (and I believe the same would apply for other lands as well). There have been references to the Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures as far as I can remember. So they do not consider asian culture "all the same", they get inspired by all of them. And while they do take inspiration from real life, they try not to make "this land is supposed to be x country" but create something unique for Subeta instead.
(but I guess one could argue the entire concept of Shengui Guo is inappropriate? idk if that's what you mean, I'm not in place of having a say in that. It's just that the names are not supposed to sound "asian and exotic", more like something original do Subeta)
basically I agree with , thank you for putting it so well.
Especially because the pronunciations listed are so wrong, at least for Mandarin.
I (a white person despite my beginner Mandarin knowledge) am also uncomfortable with the generic Asian inspired names that seem to have come from people just smashing different Asian language sounds together :-/
Qi is actually pronounced differently from the ch in cheese, at least the way I learned it and the way I say cheese. The tongue position is different. Mandarin doesn't actually have an English ch sound. Both qi and chi are pronounced differently from English ch.
do they mean Xiangtou?
Linguistic Gentrification alarm activated!
slaps the Zen out of tu~
I'm uncomfortable with how some of the names are obviously Chinese, while others are obviously Japanese (and a few maybe from Asian countries I'm not familiar with). This poll is basically saying "It doesn't matter if it's one Asian culture or another because they're all the same. Just pick one that sounds pretty." This is enforced by your comment to just pick the name "that feels right".
It's problematic to mix and match different Asian cultures just because they all sound similarly exotic and foreign. Insensitively doing so is to strip each culture of their individuality. It's like treating all Native Americans as one homogeneous group instead of acknowledging them as individual different tribes. Also see the Interchangeable Asian Cultures trope.
Excellent, I was waiting for this! :D opens poll 10 mins. later -- still no vote ...I'm going to be here for a while, aren't I?
I liked Ulonaari because I thought it might be based off something Mongolian, but I'm dubious of -- just picking a bunch of stereotypical sounds from a language and like, remixing it? There's a point where some of these approach a kind of cultural uncanny valley (mostly Qengshin Ye (?), but Qiseng and Zentu too) I can try to imagine headcanons about the characters for Qixiang and Yunmei, but not those. Qixiang can be strange/auspicious rather than weather forecast, and Yunmei can be cloud/plum blossom -- if the beastie turns out dappled it can be named for the spots. I hope I'm not being overly critical or raining on any parades here. I appreciate these in the enthusiastic spirit they were made in, and I very much appreciate how subeta is including different cultures, like I love the fact I can buy on here bc I would live off that if I had a can opener. I just hope --- that I won't have to like, unknow my language in order to enjoy the final choice, because I know full well that the quests are going to smoosh it against my eyes. ANYWAY "Qi" can be said by shortening the sound in "cheese." There's no english analogue for xiang, don't worry. (....Menghua can stay as dream babble. can't read Yuuta as anything but Utah.)
gesundheit
True! xD I mean, another Z named species wouldn't be overkill. I'm happy to see so many suggestions were made with the intent to fill in another letter of the alphabet though!
ahh-CHOO!
I voted for "Your Roomy" ...... like a room mate! HA! Yurumi
The suspense. I'm just so curious to see what this pet is going to look like lol. On a related note, I really like the sound of Yurumi, but it was a tough choice!
Not enjoying the frontrunner much, either. As I stated previously, I will still be happy about Asian-inspired anything, but I feel it is the least Asian-sounding of the bunch in terms of complex meaning, and it isn't even really an Asian word. That and obviously it is supposed to invoke "zen" which is obviously one of the most common terms to come to mind (and honestly at this point a cliched stereotype for an entire region, to be honest). Qiharu is probably the one with the most Asian cultures rolled into one, but I will admit it also is not an Asian word. I guess for me it is just disappointing that the least cohesive one, in my opinion, of the bunch is winning. As others said, it should not be about picking the easiest name to pronounce (not that I am saying that everyone who voted for it chose it for this reason - at least not solely). As a person with a keen interest in Asia, I find myself thinking that if you're going to do Asia-anything, do it all the way. Be the most authentic. Asia is my passion, so I know I am biased and probably too close to it to view it clearly, but again, just my opinion that I thought I would state after reading through the comments and seeing what others were saying.
- Ohh, I didn't even think of that. Oh well. The Noktoa and Neela came out together, and no one had a problem with that. :P
Hm. Is it just me, or do these seem more like names you'd give a pet rather than a species name?
Maybe I just don't understand the asian roots for the words. Oh well.
For me, I know I'd be a little sad if we had two Shengui Guo native pets starting with the letter Z. But, we've got time, so maybe Q lovers will help turn the tide!
I voted for Menghua but noticed what Toby said about the pronunciation too. "Mayng" doesn't really have an equivalent in Mandarin if that's what you're going for.
I like this one, but with this pronunciation it sounds like a sneeze. I'm just going to pronounce it ZEN-too. :)
which one wouldnt need subtitles ??????/////// (p.s this is a joke)
the one i personally liked didnt come up but oh well :c
They're all pretty bad, lol. But I picked Zentu because it's the most subeta-est one to me.