Help with some Japanese

*Question right at the end. Skip to it if you don't want to read my ramble.*

OK, I have a problem - I don't speak Japanese. This becomes and obstacle when I try to design a character with a Japanese name, and a meaningful name, at that. Yes, I could grab a random "Japanese names" site and snag the first one which comes up, and I'm sure it would be free, but I wanted to be fancy with this one.

There is a character I made quite a while ago who goes by the name of Kazeguro Rikimaru, "Rikimaru" at taken from Tenchu's protagonist and "Kazeguro" as comprised of two words: "kaze" meaning wind and "guro" which I somehow thought meant black. The problem is... It really doesn't. As it turns out, the proper romanisation of black is "kuro," and this is something which sounds out rather an ugly obscenity in my country, so I clearly can't use it.

My original intention with this guy was to call him "the black wind" as a reference to the classic Japanese fictional concept of cutting wind and just general weather control as a "ninja wizard." There are, however, two problems with this one. Firstly, when power customization came about, I realised I could not, in fact, have black wind, because black was not available for Storm Summoning powers. Two - I can't actually call him "the black wind."

Here's the thing, though - I looked up a bit, and it seems "guro," which I already used in the name, translates into something like "grotesque," as used in the name of the ero guro style of fiction. Having unintentionally run across fiction of this sort in the past, "grotesque" is indeed one of the many words I would use to describe it, along with "sickening" and "wrong," but that's besides the point.

What this inspired me to do, however, was colour all of Rikimaru's Strom Summoning powers red and retroactively "fix" his description to turn him into The Grotesque Wind, so to speak. But here's my problem - does "Kazeguro" actually even mean that, or anything even remotely like that? Or is it, as I fear, just Japanese-sounding gibberish?

*Question starts here:*

So here's where I need help: If anyone speaks Japanese or is otherwise able to confirm this, what, if anything, does "Kazeguro" end up meaning? And provided it's gibberish, how can I formulate a name which comes off meaning "blood wind," in the sense of wind made of or tainted with blood? I don't want to just start looking up words and jamming them together, as I have precisely zero knowledge of Japanese grammar and I don't want to look like the jokers who used Bablefish to make bios in Russian that just make me slap my head when I read them. I do not want to make a fool of myself.

Well, more of a fool than I already am, anyway

*edit*
On second thought, that's better without the link.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

The kanji for black (黒) can be pronouced "guro", like novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (石黒 一雄, Ishiguro Kazuo, the first kanji there meaning "stone").

Okay.. Here's the thing...

Japanese has 3 writing styles.

Kanji: Chinese based symbology in which a single character means a full word, possibly with multiple syllables. There are thousands of these, and most Japanese people memorize about 300-800 and rely on hiragana and context to explain what the rest are.

Hiragana: Which is the closes thing to an alphabet the japanese has as a syllabary. Each symbol is a vowel, a consonant plus a vowel, or the lettern n. Hiragana can be used interchangeably with Kanji, since the words have the same meaning. Hiragana is more of a way of spelling out a larger symbol. Think of Kanji as a pictogram and hiragana as the words under it, explaining what the image means, like a No Smoking Sign.

Katakana: Katakana is a Phonetic Syllabary, with all the same syllables as Hiragana, but drawn in a sharper and more crude manner to show that the word being phonetically written -isn't- japanese.

For comparison, look to these two images.
Hiragana
Katakana

Guro is the Katakana spelling of the word Gore. letter E in Japanese is always pronounces like the a in Ray. There is no Silent E in japanese. And O is always pronounced in the long vowel manner, never the Ooo manner.

So the word Guro is an English word translated (poorly) into Japanese to explain what genre a film is.

Ketsueki (Pronounce Keh-Tsu-Eh-Kee) is "Blood" while Chishio (Chee-Shee-Oh) is "Spilled Blood" There is no emphasis on any syllable in any japanese word and all are given the same amount of time and force when spoken.

Tsu is an interesting syllable, as it's basically saying "Su" but with the hint of a T at the beginning...

Hope this helped!

-Rachel-

PS.
And Yes, Black could work... but it'd be an odd way to say it, since it would be "Windblack" with a literal translation of what "Black" means, rather than a more open Darkness/Black/Shade/etc which other words could provide. And even then, Gurokaze would be the way to make it a descriptive. Blackwind rather than Windblack.

I'm going to piggy back onto this thread, can someone translate a english phrase into romaji(? the one spelled with english letters) for me? I can't seem to find a online translator that does it

I do not know "Mind control" in Japanese... And frea it would probably be in Katakana.

Heroine.. Eiyuu is Hero, so Eiyuuko could be a feminine version of hero. "Herogirl"

"Mainudocon Eiyuuko no Kotsujuko" would translate to "Mindcontrol Herogirl's humiliation/embarrassment" which is -about- as close as I think I'm gonna get... And I only speak Japanese as well as a third grader does. >.>

-Rachel-

What is it with black grotesque in this game?!?

>.>
<.<

Remember! Third grade vocabulary. >_<

-Rachel-

I have a Fire/Dark Corruptor named "Ghost Wind" in Japanese.

I didn't want to go through all the research to mke sure my grammar is correct, so I just went ahead and named him Reikaze. There are several words that translate loosely to "ghost", I picked the one I liked the sound of the best.

I figured that if kamikaze means "divine wind" and kurokaze means "black wind" then Reikaze would mean "ghost wind". It may or may not be grammatically correct, but it's good enough for me, and it was available, which Kurokaze was not.

Wow, that's... A lot more information than I expected to get I'm very happy for it, however. A few points I want to address:

First, I misspoke when I said I was looking for a "name." It's true in the broadest sense of the word, but what I'm looking for is more a moniker, in the sense of "He is Rikimaru, the Black/Blood Wind!" where Rikimaru is his personal name and the rest is what he is known as. Think Jack the Ripper. You can see why I'd call it a "name," because it is in the most literal sense, but the phrasing I used is confusing. I'm looking to give this guy a meaningful clan name that doesn't necessarily follow naming traditions as long as it actually means what I need it to mean.

I keep thinking of - and I know I'll misspell it - the way people in Naruto refer to Gaara as Gaara of the Sand (as I've seen it translated), which in Japanese sounds like Sabaak no Gaara. I've no idea if I have this right, but this is sort of what I'm looking for. Basically, "Rikimaru of the Black/Blood Wind." How would that work?

Secondly, "chi no kaze" looks interesting. However, it's problematic in that it's three separate words. I don't suppose there's a single word for this, or something which would roughly translate to something like this? The problem here is that this look like it translates to "wind of blood" and ends up producing "Rikimaru of the wind of the blood," which is... A bad way to go about this. I know in English I can just jam "blood" and "wind" together and produce the grammatically incorrect "bloodwind," which is still something that's easy to read, understand and follow nevertheless, but I don't know if there's any way to say this in Japanese.

Secondarily, having no useful knowledge of Japanese grammar, I wouldn't know how to make the phrase possessive, in the "Rikimaru of the..." style that I keep repeating. What I'd ask is if there exists a way to phrase this without participles, such that "blood" is expressed by a word that, through the way it is said, qualifies "wind." In English, I can just say "blood wind" as two words, and very rudimentary grammar would suggest that "blood" somehow describes the particular "wind" in question. It doesn't tell us HOW it describes it, such as whether the wind is made up of blood or is coloured like blood or is in some other way abstractly reminiscent of blood. All it gives us is wind characterised as being like blood, and in just two words. If I can pull this off in Japanese and have the whole packet reference Rikimaru, I'd be sold then and there.

Finally, I don't know why that is, but I've somehow grown attached to the word "guro" and am curious if this still can't be worked in somehow. Considering what kind of monster this guy is (pretty unpleasant villain), the description seems to fit. You see him called "the grotesque wind" and are thereafter hit with a thick, blood-red wind straight to the face. "Grotesque" is what comes to mind, right alongside "revolting," but that has less of a punch to it, as it were.

To distil everything down to a more specific request: is it possible to somehow turn the name into "Rikimaru of the Black/Blood/Grotesque Wind" in as many words as necessary and in any order as is required. If so, what form would that take?

*edit*
Just to explain - if it seems like I glossed over a lot of things, I apologise. There's a lot of good info to cover Rest assured that I did read it all and it was quite enlightening.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

On the note of why I care: it's a personal thing. I realise that most people wouldn't know the difference and some people who should probably won't look hard enough to see it. However, I'd still rather have something clever that most people miss but someone gets every once in a while over something wrong that no-one knows better about, but horrifies someone who does from time to time.

Again, I tend to be on the receiving end of this with people's ****** Russian born from horribly flawed online translators concocting garbled language that has no discernible meaning unless you translate it back into English and read from there. I try to not be that guy if I can help it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

This might already have been addressed, but the reason the guy's name is "Kazeguro" for "Blackwind" (Though more literally "Windblack") is because of a Japanese writing/speech nuance where in some cases, a portmanteau of two words with similar syllables will be altered to create a slight repetitious sound.
Such as the weapon Kusasari no Gama, even though scythe is actually "kama"

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

What it seems you're looking for is "Gurokaze no Rikimaru" (Written 黒風の力丸), "Rikimaru of the Black Wind", where the "guro" in "Gurokaze" has a double meaning.