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A different kind of name mangling question

From:Elyse M. Grasso <emgrasso@...>
Date:Wednesday, March 9, 2005, 0:02
Does anyone happen to know a good source that maps a lot of Chinese and Indian
names for various religious and folkloric (?) beings and terms to their
Japanese equivalents? My collection of books on Asian folklore and religions
is fairly extensive, but not very helpful when trying to track cultural
references... even when the manga and anime writers aren't having fun with
kanji puns.

Examples of kanji punning that I happen to know about:
 two characters named Hiei and Kurama which are names of religiously important
mountains near Kyoto, but the characters' names are written with different
kanji from the mountains.
        "The Journey to the West" is "Saiyuki" in Japanese, but the
manga/anime "Saiyuki" which is (very) loosely inspired by "The Journey to the
West" uses different kanji.

I believe I've also encountered a couplpe of cases where well-known kanji
names are given non-standard readings when used as character names, but I
can't remember the details at the moment.

(By the way, if you ever want to hear modern Japanese pronouns given a
thorough workout, watch an episode of Saiyuki in Japanese with subtitles,
especially one that features a battle between the Sanzo-ikkou and the
Kougaiji-tachi.
How to swear with pronouns in one easy lesson...
I'm still googling to find out if there is a semantic difference between
omae-ra and omae-tachi.)

Thanks
--
Elyse Grasso

The World of Cherani Station
www.data-raptors.com/cherani/index.html
Cherani Tradespeech
www.data-raptors.com/cherani/tradespeech.html

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