Thomas Hood writes:
light. "Your assignment is a man named Ranma
Saotome, born of Genma and Nodoka Saotome.
All we know is that he was born in Juuban
and he is eighteen years old." He leaned over
to refill her glass. "I want to know every-
thing: likes, dislikes, feuds, physical char-
acteristics, the whole nine yards. Is that
clear?"
</SNIP>
Well, the first thing Nabiki would do in this
instance is to rattle off a brief physical
description right away. Why? Well, he's
standing right in front of her, and she knows
it. 'Ranma' MEANS 'Wild Stallion' in Japanese,
and any person who knows Japanese will
automatically make the translation.
I guess that what I'm getting at is that to
assume that there is no connection between
the nickname 'Wild Stallion' and the name
'Ranma Saotome' is to assume incorrectly.
I see this a lot, and I don't think people who write
this really understand Japanese names. (Note: I don't claim
to know Japanese either, but I know a little of how
complicated the business of the names is. The following
info is taken from Jim Breen's WWWJDIC server).
When Takahashi writes Ranma's name she uses two
particular kanji that can be pronounced "Ranma". The first
has the meaning "riot, war, disorder, disturb" and the
"on" reading (based on the original Chinese pronunciation)
"ran". The second kanji has the meaning "horse" and a "kun"
reading (based on the native Japanese prononciation) "ma".
However - the first kanji also has an "on" reading of
"ron" and several "kun" readings. The second kanji has
an "on" reading of "ba" and another kun reading of "uma".
To make it more complicated, there are seven other kanji
which have either an "on" reading or a "kun" reading of
"ran", with meanings like, "egg, ovum, spawn, roe",
"storm, tempest", "perusal, see", "excessive, overflow,
spread out", "indigo", "orchid, Holland", and "column,
handrail, blank, space". There are a total of 170 kanji
which have an "on" or "kun" reading of "ma", each with its
own set of meanings.
This means if you want to write the name "Ranma" in
kanji, you've got 1360 possible combinations just using
the jouyou and jinmeiyou kanji generally used for names,
without even getting into any more obscure ones, and only
one of those combinations is going to give you something
like "Wild Stallion". It might be different if Ranma were
a commonly used Japanese name, with an established way of
writing it, but that's not the case. Alternatively, if you
just see the name written down in kanji, you would pick up
on the meaning of it, but you wouldn't be sure how to
pronounce it.
To summarize: it's not likely anyone hearing the name
"Ranma" is going to instantly think "Wild Stallion", since
that meaning is taken from the written kanji. He or she is
just as likely to think of "Orchid demon" or something like
that.
Reid Carson
rcarson@rcarson.com