Why do Genshin Impact characters have different names in Japanese?
The open-world adventure game Genshin Impact, developed by Shanghai-based studio HoYoverse, features a number of characters with Chinese names. While the English localization of Genshin uses the phonetic pinyin spelling of the Mandarin pronunciations of these names, the Japanese and Korean localizations feature names that look quite different from their Mandarin counterparts.
For example, the character named 刻晴 Kèqíng in Mandarin is called Kokusei in Japanese and Gak-cheong in Korean. To understand why, we’ll first look at how the Chinese writing system works.
In English, words are written using letters that represent the sounds in the word. In contrast, Chinese is written using characters that represent a word or syllable without explicitly indicating its pronunciation. For example, the character 中 only indicates its meaning (‘middle’), not its pronunciation (zhōng in Mandarin). As a result, words are generally written using the same character today as they were thousands of years ago, even though the pronunciation has evolved over time. The character for middle (中) was *ṭyung /ʈɨuŋ/ in Middle Chinese; this evolved into modern Mandarin zhōng, Cantonese zung¹, Hokkien tiong, and so on.
Centuries ago, Japanese borrowed many Chinese words into its vocabulary. Japanese speakers of that time adapted the pronunciation of these words to fit Japanese phonotactics, resulting in what we call Sino-Japanese vocabulary. The character we looked at before, 中, was *ṭyung in Middle Chinese. Japanese doesn’t allow -ng at the end of a word, so ṭyung was borrowed as tyū instead. Over time, the ty- at the beginning of words came to be pronounced as ch-, so the modern Japanese pronunciation of 中 is chū.
Korean also borrowed heavily from Chinese vocabulary. However, Korean phototactics differ greatly from those of Japanese, so the same Middle Chinese syllable has different renderings in Japanese and Korean. Korean, unlike Japanese, does allow -ng at the end of words, so Middle Chinese 中 *ṭyung became tyung in Middle Korean. This eventually evolved into modern Korean jung.
As a result of this borrowing process, each Chinese character has established pronunciations in Japanese and Korean. The pronunciations of Chinese characters in non-Chinese languages are called Sino-Xenic readings in general, with Sino-Japanese and Sino-Korean referring to the readings in specific languages. Japanese and Korean people thus usually read Chinese names using an established Sino-Xenic reading rather than the pronunciation of the character in present-day Mandarin. As such, the localizers of Genshin Impact chose to use their language’s Sino-Xenic readings for the majority of the names of Chinese characters.
- 鍾離 Zhōnglí → J. Shōri, K. Jong-nyeo
- 凝光 Níngguāng → J. Gyōko, K. Eung-gwang
- 北斗 Běidǒu → J. Hokuto, K. Buk-du
The story, however, doesn’t end there! Though Japanese people originally borrowed Chinese characters to write borrowed Sino-Japanese vocabulary, they also use Chinese characters to write native vocabulary. For example, the character 人, which means “person”, has the Sino-Japanese reading jin, from Middle Chinese *nyin /ȵiɪn/. However, 人 is also used to write hito, the native Japanese word for person. As such, each Chinese character has two types of readings in Japanese: the Sino-Japanese reading, called on’yomi, and the native Japanese reading, called kun’yomi.
While most Chinese compound words, including Chinese names, are pronounced using the on’yomi, Genshin shows some exceptions. 行秋 Xíngqiū is Yukuaki in the Japanese localization, which uses the kun’yomi instead of the on’yomi. This may be because Yukuaki could feasably be a Japanese name, while some of the other characters have names that don’t make as much sense in Japanese. The character 香菱 Xiānglíng is called Shanrin, which is a phonetic rendering of the Mandarin pronunciation. Lastly, 七七 Qīqī, whose name means “seven-seven”, is called Nana, the kun’yomi for “seven”. This may be because qīqī sounds like chichi, which can mean “breast” or “father” in Japanese.
Interestingly enough, although Vietnamese has its own tradition of Sino-Vietnamese readings of Chinese characters, the Vietnamese localization team chose to use the Mandarin names spelled in pinyin. I found this quite surprising, becuase Vietnamese speakers generally use Sino-Vietnamese readings for the names of places in China and of Chinese people. Indeed, the Chinese capital of 北京 Běijīng is called Bắc Kinh in Vietnamese, and Chinese politician 蔣介石 Chiang Kai-Shek is Tưởng Giới Thạch. It would have been interesting to see the characters 北斗 Běidǒu and 香菱 Xiānglíng, for example, be called Bắc Đẩu and Hương Lăng.