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narcasseLooking over unfinished fic right now what strikes me most is the huge annoyance with the Marchioness of Kiev’s given name. Her surname quite obviously should be ‘Aslan’ or ‘lion’ in Turkish but the Romanisation of ‘Astharoshe’ seems a little too extended a name for it really to be ‘Astaroth’ at a first glance. That said a quick Google suggests that ‘Astaroth’ renders into Japanese as ‘Asutarosu’ which isn’t too far from ‘Astharoshe’ really and pretty much knocks the idea of her name really being ‘Ashtoreth’ on the head neatly.
At the end of the day ‘Astharoshe Asran’ makes no sense in among the real world names that are used for everybody else. Even if the surnames tend towards words rather than real world surnames e.g. ‘Fortuna’ they’re still actual words, especially if ‘Barvon’ really ought to be the Venetian ‘barufon’ instead. Related to ‘barufa’ which can be a lawsuit which suits at least one of my alternative story threads nicely. There’s a slightly different criteria with Šahrzād’s apparent surname which is missing the ‘Abd’ part before it in so far as it’s a phrase but one that can be used as a given surname too and since it’s a phrase praising a personal attribute that she does indeed possess it’s a little difficult to tell if it’s an actual surname or just a personal appellation. Either way all the names used are real world names, individual terms or phrases so suddenly having a character with an entirely fabricated name would stand out in the same way that ‘Flamberge’ would make no sense as a codename in an organisation where everyone else has a German one.
Then again sloppy translations seem to be the hallmark of the American editions as typified by things like not being capable of translating ‘lieutenant colonel’ and turning ‘auto-hunter’ into ‘death-hunter’ the latter of which sounds all together far too divorced from describing the actual subject. An automated hunter would presumably automatically hunt something: a death hunter would probably just sniff around graveyards with a nachzehrer or two while trying to unearth the secret refuge of the local Camarilla prince.
At the end of the day ‘Astharoshe Asran’ makes no sense in among the real world names that are used for everybody else. Even if the surnames tend towards words rather than real world surnames e.g. ‘Fortuna’ they’re still actual words, especially if ‘Barvon’ really ought to be the Venetian ‘barufon’ instead. Related to ‘barufa’ which can be a lawsuit which suits at least one of my alternative story threads nicely. There’s a slightly different criteria with Šahrzād’s apparent surname which is missing the ‘Abd’ part before it in so far as it’s a phrase but one that can be used as a given surname too and since it’s a phrase praising a personal attribute that she does indeed possess it’s a little difficult to tell if it’s an actual surname or just a personal appellation. Either way all the names used are real world names, individual terms or phrases so suddenly having a character with an entirely fabricated name would stand out in the same way that ‘Flamberge’ would make no sense as a codename in an organisation where everyone else has a German one.
Then again sloppy translations seem to be the hallmark of the American editions as typified by things like not being capable of translating ‘lieutenant colonel’ and turning ‘auto-hunter’ into ‘death-hunter’ the latter of which sounds all together far too divorced from describing the actual subject. An automated hunter would presumably automatically hunt something: a death hunter would probably just sniff around graveyards with a nachzehrer or two while trying to unearth the secret refuge of the local Camarilla prince.
