Irenicus---It's all Greek to me!

Eustathius · Post by **Eustathius** » Wed May 07, 2003 3:49 am

Irenicus means the exiled one in Elvish as we learn in the end of the game but in greek -as a native speaker i can verify it- means Peaceful!Don't you think that is a paradox!

Niktorius · Post by **Niktorius** » Wed May 07, 2003 4:21 am

hmmm....no
Actually theres alot of crazy dudes that have called them self peaceful

Eustathius · Post by **Eustathius** » Wed May 07, 2003 4:29 am

Maybe but even the Pacific ocean was called like that as a paradox because it was never "pacific"!

Coot · Post by **Coot** » Wed May 07, 2003 5:42 am

It sot of weird how many earth-names people use in Faerun. Irenicus is Greek. Khalid is Arab. Jan Janssen is Dutch. Minsc is Russian. Yoshimo is Japanese. A lot of other people use English names. And I'm pretty sure Yaga Shura is a position in the Kama Sutra...

Sucineri · Post by **Sucineri** » Wed May 07, 2003 6:07 am

I personally don't find it strange considering almost every language has a word that means a different thing in another language.

Eustathius · Post by **Eustathius** » Wed May 07, 2003 6:09 am

this happens in movies as well!Remember Darth (archaic Dark?) Vader (Father?) in Star Wars. Morfeas (The God of Sleep and Dreams in the Greek mythology) in Matrix who "offers" the first hint to Neo while he "sleeps and dream a life "!

fable · Post by **fable** » Wed May 07, 2003 6:35 am

Originally posted by Sucineri
I personally don't find it strange considering almost every language has a word that means a different thing in another language.

Coot is being ironic, I suspect, pointing out how many realworld cultures have been given their equivalent in Faerun. (He never mentions languages. He only focuses on names.) It's clearly deliberate on the developers' part, and probably an attempt to make the BG universe feel "larger" without truly representing all the diverse cultural elements that would be necessary for so many different peoples. At least it gives a glimpse of ethnic diversity.

Eustathius · Post by **Eustathius** » Wed May 07, 2003 6:57 am

Can anybody tell me what the word paladin means?

Minerva · Post by **Minerva** » Wed May 07, 2003 7:04 am

Originally posted by Coot
Yoshimo is Japanese.

Yoshimo sounds like Japanese, but I've never heard anyone who's called Yoshimo past or present (though it's possible, considering the number of names in Japanese). Nor, Kachiko for that matter, though it is more likely there are Kachiko in Japan.

In the mod Tortured Souls, there are characters Najoki Nakanishi, a femald, and Hitomi Nakanishi, a male. While Nakanishi is proper Japanese family name and Hitomi is proper first name, Najoki is as strange as Yoshimo is. And Hitomi is always a girl's name...

Eriks · Post by **Eriks** » Wed May 07, 2003 10:02 am

I agree with fable

Coot · Post by **Coot** » Thu May 08, 2003 1:22 am

Originally posted by Minerva
Yoshimo sounds like Japanese, but I've never heard anyone who's called Yoshimo past or present (though it's possible, considering the number of names in Japanese).

I've a friend and she collects all sort of dolls. She has some rare actionfigure and he's called Yoshimo something... or something Yoshimo, I forget. But he's a ninjalike samuraiwielding character and since I think mostly in stereotypes I figured he's probably Japanese...

Then again, I never checked to make sure.

Minerva · Post by **Minerva** » Thu May 08, 2003 1:49 am

Originally posted by Coot
I've a friend and she collects all sort of dolls. She has some rare actionfigure and he's called Yoshimo something... or something Yoshimo, I forget. But he's a ninjalike samuraiwielding character and since I think mostly in stereotypes I figured he's probably Japanese... Then again, I never checked to make sure.

Yoshino, maybe?

I don't trust "Japanese" characters/figures in books/movies/dramas etc made outside of Japan. No Japanese man in these days dressed in Ninja style, and they don't walk around in Karate uniform, unless you are taking micky.

Worst still, they often speak unidentifiable Japanese or even Chinese!

NiteWulf · Post by **NiteWulf** » Thu May 08, 2003 1:52 am

Nor do all Dutch look like Jan Janssen

Coot · Post by **Coot** » Thu May 08, 2003 5:58 am

Originally posted by NiteWulf
Nor do all Dutch look like Jan Janssen

Maybe they don't. But I do. My nose is a bit bigger than Jan's though. And as a con-artist I'm much better (BTW, there's this bridge in Brooklyn I'm dying to sell you!).

I did a quick Google. Most websites that have the name Yoshimo in 'em are BG related, but a few weren't. I came across a Kumiko Yoshimo which sounds Japanese... and a 'Japanese photographer named Yoshimo'.
Which doesn't prove anything of course. I'm Dutch but my parents didn't give me a Dutch first name. 'Coot' is actually an ancient Egyptian term. I'ts a bit difficult to translate directly but it means something like 'he that posts useless and boring messages on certain forums'. Man, I wish I had a cooler name. Like NiteWulf or somethin...

fable · Post by **fable** » Thu May 08, 2003 8:33 am

I suspect a keyphrase may be "Japanese-sounding" where Yoshimo's name is concerned, for Amero-European audiences. A friend and I differ where his personality traits (as revealed in the first chapter, at least) are concerned. He finds Yoshimo's mixture of sly competence and apparent fear resembles Jackie Chan films, while to me, that fear comes off as down-to-earth pragmatism--which along with his obvious skill and casual friendliness brings to mind Toshiro Mifune's famed samurai in Kurosawa's great pair of films, Yojimbo and Sanjuro. (Leone and Eastwood remade Yojimbo as Fistful of Dollars, but the original is so much better.)

"Aerie," on the other hand, sounds, well, airborne (like an eagle's ayrie, or nest), and Minsc's accent matches his Eastern Slavic city name.

kopywrite · Post by **kopywrite** » Thu May 08, 2003 11:55 am

(Breaks lengthy silence to provide very important input to this thread)

Way back when, another long departed GB poster (Path of Wind) did a google on Jan Jansen and discovered that he was the manager of a container port in Durban...
A google nowadays reveals that Jan Jansen is also now a shoe designer. Is there no end to his talents?

nephtu · Post by **nephtu** » Thu May 08, 2003 2:20 pm

Jan

That's why he has so many stories to tell

Coot · Post by **Coot** » Fri May 09, 2003 2:18 am

It's because both 'Jan' and 'Jansen' are very common names in Holland. It's like 'John Smith'.

SPOILERISH:
Fable, Yoshimo actually reminds me of 'Throne of Blood', a Japanese movie and a beautiful rewrite of Shakespeare's Macbeth, by Akira Kurosawa.
The main character Washizu is promised victory over his enemies and that he'll live forever. That is, the three witches tell him, 'until the forest walks'. At the climax of the story Washizu's enemies try to sneak into his fortress wearing medieval camouflage-oufits. In the fog it looks just like trees are advancing on the fort and Washizu's men decide, well, this is it, Washizu will die after all, just like them witches said, and Washizu's own men put a lot of arrows in him.
This is a lot like the geasspell that was put on Yoshimo. No matter what you do in the game, Yoshimo will die (yes I know, there are cheat-like ways to keep him alive but that's not the point

. He was MEANT to die). That fact alone brings depth to the character. No matter what Yoshimo will do, it'll end badly. Betray you and he gets to live but loses his honor. Do not betray you and he'll keep his honor but he 'll die. Like Washizu he's caught up in the consequences of his choices, consequences he can no longer control.
After the fight with Irenicus in Spellhold, Yoshimo attacks you. There are two dialogues, right before your pc fights him and one when he's dying. The sheer despair, the realisation that he was never more than a pawn who had never any say in the matter, the realisation that he should have done SOMETHING but didn't, the realisation that he lost everything, both his honor and his life... I was very impressed by that.
That's one of the many aspects I like about this game: there's no mindless optimism like you find in a lot of other games, films, books and comics. Not everything works out all right, even if you work hard and give your best and 'believe in yourself'. Yoshimo loses all. Sarevok tries to become a better man but, in the end, becomes even more insane. Viconia tries to become a better person and gets poisoned, leaving behind her child and her man.

Wow! Deep stuff for a mere computergame.

nephtu · Post by **nephtu** » Fri May 09, 2003 12:03 pm

Paladins

Originally posted by Eustathius
Can anybody tell me what the word paladin means?

I realized this never got answered. The term is first used in the Chanson de Roland, an early medieval romance featuring 12 paladins - companions of a fictionalized emperor Charlemagne.

The etymology is the same as the word palatine, and is more or less "of, or pertaining to palaces" - so the intended origin is clearly of a royal elite guard of sorts. These cats were presented as ideals of early chivalric virtue, so, by extension, it came to mean an ideal of knighthood.

Hope this helps!

fable · Post by **fable** » Fri May 09, 2003 3:15 pm

Re: Paladins

Originally posted by nephtu
These cats were presented as ideals of early chivalric virtue, so, by extension, it came to mean an ideal of knighthood.

Thank you for catching that, @Nephtu. I'd only wish to clarify the latter a bit--I don't think you mean that the group of knights in the Charlemagne Cycle became an "ideal" of knighthood. They may have represented some of those ideals, however. Right now I can't find a lengthy study devoted to just that point (grumble) but I'm looking for it. It quotes several authoritative 15th century texts on the ideals that knights should represent--Charity is the only one that comes to mind; but I'll look for relevant quotes later this evening, to post.

However, you're right, the term "paladin" in modern times came to represent what knighthood supposedly stood for, while the term "knight" came to eventually mean some form of European nobility--erroneously so, since the two were never synonymous. King Valdemar III of Denmark, for example, was nobility from birth, but only became a knight when he traveled to Jerusalem and took part in a Crusade. The then-pope made him a Knight of the Holy Cross, which gave him the right to arbitrate in moral matters on an international level.