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012 - Seidhe & Ulawen; Japanese Is Easy
The names are pronounced "sigh-eh" and "uh-lah-wehn". Those are the two names that I decided on as middle names for Shin and Sayoko Mouri from RW / YST. They are what kept me up last night. I lay in bed, desperately trying to fall asleep because I knew I had my Japanese exam today, listening to my "go to sleep" music on iTunes, but my thoughts kept going back to the situation surrounding my favorite character Cye / Shin. [[Yes, I am a nerd. I am obsessed. I admit it. There, I said it.]]
I realized that, actually, his character is just as complex as Kento / Shuu's for the simple fact that almost everyone agrees on Cye / Shin having an accent of some European origin, but everyone disagrees on where and how he got it. In Japanese, I believe that Shin was given a British accent, but that's unconfirmed, and the cannon information on his character does not explain how he got this accent. Then, when they went to English, they gave him an Irish accent, which makes sense to me because he's a redhead. I'd decided a little while ago that I would make his middle name "Cye" and have him use that name when around his non-Japanese relatives, but I then began to wonder if "Cye" was even Irish. I think this was when I became fully conscious and unable to fall asleep.
So, I got up and started searching the internet for the meaning of the name "Cye". Turns out it is actually a girl's name in Australia. ^^;; Whatever, so I thought, what if it was just a shortened version of his Irish middle name? I found a couple of names I liked: Cian, Cyrnan, Saidhe, and Syagris. The last two came about because of the fact that the alternate spelling for "Cye" is "Sai", but that version *really* irks me for some reason; maybe I just think Cye looks cooler. ^^;; Anyway, I also decided to start looking for a middle name for Shin's older sister, name Sayoko. I was looking at names such as Aedin and Elan, but eventually settled on Ulawen since "Ula" meant "sea-jewel" and "wen" basically means "maiden". Since I figured I wouldn't find a name for Cye / Shin that I could actually get a meaning for, I decided that his mother would name him after a "Sea Prince" from one of her childhood stories (that her dad told her as a bedtime story?).
Yet again I attempted to go to sleep, but failed, because I had come upon another realization: Irish / Gaelic / Celtic pronunciation is *very* different from English, so what if the name I'd chosen actually was pronounced *nothing* like the "sigh" sound that was to become Cye / Shin's nickname? So, I had to get out of bed again and research not a name this time, but what combination of letters would create the "sigh" sound. After much searching, I'd almost given up, when I accidentally came upon a group of four letters that ends up sounding like "eye" in English, "-eidh". I was absolutely ecstatic, because all I had to do was slap an 's' in front of it and it instantly became "Seidh", prounced like the English "sigh". I then noticed that it looked a lot like the one name I'd seen earlier, "Saidhe". So, Cye / Shin's name became "Seidhe" and "Seidh" for short with "Ula" being short for "Ulawen". ^-^
As I fell asleep I thought up a scenario for him to get from "Seidh" to "Cye", though I was glad it didn't keep me up:
-Shin's family (Mother, older sister, & himself) moves to Ireland after his dad dies b/c his mom is pretty much an emotional wreck & she can't take care of Shin & Sayoko all that well
-On a side note, this doesn't put them in good standing with the Mouri family in Japan, as Shin's dad was the head of the family and running their business, which now falls on the aging Mouri grandparents
-They move in with her older brother, who inherited his mother's parents' house (mansion) and is more than willing to help her through this difficult time
-So, Sayoko and Shin have to attend public school (can't afford the private Japanese school they have in Ireland) and want to at least have given names that the kids can pronounce, so start going by their middle names (Ulawen & Seidhe, respectively)
-Naturally, some kids tease them for it, but Sayoko is tougher than Shin and he takes it a little harder than she does
-During his 7th grade year (13 years old--moved there at the age of 8 or so, I think), they get a new English teacher from Britain, who takes a liking to Shin (meaning Shin becomes the teacher's pet) and helps Shin build up his confidence when dealing with the other students as well as realize how much he likes speaking in English
-This same teacher asks the class as one of their first projects to come up with an English name to use in class, but it had to have come from the pronunciation of their Irish names. This is where "Seidh" becomes "Cye".
-In talking with this teacher (I think I'm going to call him William Butler, but I'll have to check his name, too ^^), Shin eventually comes to the conclusion that he should take up his responsibility of being a member of the Mouri family in Japan and that they should move back to Japan. It takes some convincing for his mother, but she eventually agrees.
-They move back and reforge their bonds with the Mouri family, helping with the business and caring for the Hagi Sea, just in time for Shin to go through the "ceremony" of diving into the sea at 15 years old (when he gets his armor orb), which his mother suspected when Shin suddenly became adamnet about moving back to Japan
-On a side note, I had a thought about when Shin moved into an apartment in Tokyo right after they got finished with school in the middle of March '88: maybe he moves into a building across the street from the Shuu family restaurant in Yokohama? I have to check the geography on this one. Anyway, Kento would come up to him and say something like, "Alone again? That's the third time you've come in this week and you're never with anyone." Something like that.
ALL OF THIS came to me before I could finally go to sleep at 3AM. Needless to say, I woke up to my 7:30 alarm and went right back to sleep, not waking up again until 8:45AM. Great, my exam is at 9:30. So, I just got dressed and got breakfast before heading out to my exam, since I knew I wouldn't be able to take a shower in time. I eat my cinnamon-sugar-pastry-thing on the way over and my croissant w/ sausage & cheese when I got there. My milk was warm and my banana was sticky, so I didn't drink / eat those, but I did manage to scarf my yogurt before our exam started.
Guess how long it took me? 15 minutes. Then another 5 minutes for Kuwai-sensee (the head instructor) to say 5 sentences twice over that told you which U.S. states you were supposed to write down in katakana. That was my Japanese exam. I was going to head back to my dorm room, but I realized that OSU was going to be clearing out my CSE account, so I went over there to transfer all of my files by e-mail. I also replied to some of my LJ comments then sent my mom an e-mail about picking me up later today.
I was going to take a shower when I got back here, but I got absorbed in this post as well as doing some internet research on the Irish school system, which sounds a lot closer to the US school system than the Japanese one. ^^;; Then, a bunch of girls raced for the showers, so I had to wait anyway. Now, I'm going to head out to Market Place with Kevin (who had been asking me what he should wear to Axis tomorrow night). :D The good news is that he's not as sick as I thought he was.
Sakusha-kitty gets this post because of my Shin obsession, plus the fairly weird dream I had last night, which I will put in later. Food now.
Music Additions: Wanna Talk - Bi / Rain, Oh! - Shinhwa, Fires at Midnight - Blackmore's Night [[Again]], Alone, What About Love, Don't Leave Me Like This, In The Mornin' - Heart, Fires at Midnight - Blackmore's Night [[Yes, *Again*]], WILD RUSH - T.M.Revolution, Heartbreaker - Pat Benatar, Bitch - Meredith Brooks, and Her Strut - Bob Seger
I realized that, actually, his character is just as complex as Kento / Shuu's for the simple fact that almost everyone agrees on Cye / Shin having an accent of some European origin, but everyone disagrees on where and how he got it. In Japanese, I believe that Shin was given a British accent, but that's unconfirmed, and the cannon information on his character does not explain how he got this accent. Then, when they went to English, they gave him an Irish accent, which makes sense to me because he's a redhead. I'd decided a little while ago that I would make his middle name "Cye" and have him use that name when around his non-Japanese relatives, but I then began to wonder if "Cye" was even Irish. I think this was when I became fully conscious and unable to fall asleep.
So, I got up and started searching the internet for the meaning of the name "Cye". Turns out it is actually a girl's name in Australia. ^^;; Whatever, so I thought, what if it was just a shortened version of his Irish middle name? I found a couple of names I liked: Cian, Cyrnan, Saidhe, and Syagris. The last two came about because of the fact that the alternate spelling for "Cye" is "Sai", but that version *really* irks me for some reason; maybe I just think Cye looks cooler. ^^;; Anyway, I also decided to start looking for a middle name for Shin's older sister, name Sayoko. I was looking at names such as Aedin and Elan, but eventually settled on Ulawen since "Ula" meant "sea-jewel" and "wen" basically means "maiden". Since I figured I wouldn't find a name for Cye / Shin that I could actually get a meaning for, I decided that his mother would name him after a "Sea Prince" from one of her childhood stories (that her dad told her as a bedtime story?).
Yet again I attempted to go to sleep, but failed, because I had come upon another realization: Irish / Gaelic / Celtic pronunciation is *very* different from English, so what if the name I'd chosen actually was pronounced *nothing* like the "sigh" sound that was to become Cye / Shin's nickname? So, I had to get out of bed again and research not a name this time, but what combination of letters would create the "sigh" sound. After much searching, I'd almost given up, when I accidentally came upon a group of four letters that ends up sounding like "eye" in English, "-eidh". I was absolutely ecstatic, because all I had to do was slap an 's' in front of it and it instantly became "Seidh", prounced like the English "sigh". I then noticed that it looked a lot like the one name I'd seen earlier, "Saidhe". So, Cye / Shin's name became "Seidhe" and "Seidh" for short with "Ula" being short for "Ulawen". ^-^
As I fell asleep I thought up a scenario for him to get from "Seidh" to "Cye", though I was glad it didn't keep me up:
-Shin's family (Mother, older sister, & himself) moves to Ireland after his dad dies b/c his mom is pretty much an emotional wreck & she can't take care of Shin & Sayoko all that well
-On a side note, this doesn't put them in good standing with the Mouri family in Japan, as Shin's dad was the head of the family and running their business, which now falls on the aging Mouri grandparents
-They move in with her older brother, who inherited his mother's parents' house (mansion) and is more than willing to help her through this difficult time
-So, Sayoko and Shin have to attend public school (can't afford the private Japanese school they have in Ireland) and want to at least have given names that the kids can pronounce, so start going by their middle names (Ulawen & Seidhe, respectively)
-Naturally, some kids tease them for it, but Sayoko is tougher than Shin and he takes it a little harder than she does
-During his 7th grade year (13 years old--moved there at the age of 8 or so, I think), they get a new English teacher from Britain, who takes a liking to Shin (meaning Shin becomes the teacher's pet) and helps Shin build up his confidence when dealing with the other students as well as realize how much he likes speaking in English
-This same teacher asks the class as one of their first projects to come up with an English name to use in class, but it had to have come from the pronunciation of their Irish names. This is where "Seidh" becomes "Cye".
-In talking with this teacher (I think I'm going to call him William Butler, but I'll have to check his name, too ^^), Shin eventually comes to the conclusion that he should take up his responsibility of being a member of the Mouri family in Japan and that they should move back to Japan. It takes some convincing for his mother, but she eventually agrees.
-They move back and reforge their bonds with the Mouri family, helping with the business and caring for the Hagi Sea, just in time for Shin to go through the "ceremony" of diving into the sea at 15 years old (when he gets his armor orb), which his mother suspected when Shin suddenly became adamnet about moving back to Japan
-On a side note, I had a thought about when Shin moved into an apartment in Tokyo right after they got finished with school in the middle of March '88: maybe he moves into a building across the street from the Shuu family restaurant in Yokohama? I have to check the geography on this one. Anyway, Kento would come up to him and say something like, "Alone again? That's the third time you've come in this week and you're never with anyone." Something like that.
ALL OF THIS came to me before I could finally go to sleep at 3AM. Needless to say, I woke up to my 7:30 alarm and went right back to sleep, not waking up again until 8:45AM. Great, my exam is at 9:30. So, I just got dressed and got breakfast before heading out to my exam, since I knew I wouldn't be able to take a shower in time. I eat my cinnamon-sugar-pastry-thing on the way over and my croissant w/ sausage & cheese when I got there. My milk was warm and my banana was sticky, so I didn't drink / eat those, but I did manage to scarf my yogurt before our exam started.
Guess how long it took me? 15 minutes. Then another 5 minutes for Kuwai-sensee (the head instructor) to say 5 sentences twice over that told you which U.S. states you were supposed to write down in katakana. That was my Japanese exam. I was going to head back to my dorm room, but I realized that OSU was going to be clearing out my CSE account, so I went over there to transfer all of my files by e-mail. I also replied to some of my LJ comments then sent my mom an e-mail about picking me up later today.
I was going to take a shower when I got back here, but I got absorbed in this post as well as doing some internet research on the Irish school system, which sounds a lot closer to the US school system than the Japanese one. ^^;; Then, a bunch of girls raced for the showers, so I had to wait anyway. Now, I'm going to head out to Market Place with Kevin (who had been asking me what he should wear to Axis tomorrow night). :D The good news is that he's not as sick as I thought he was.
Sakusha-kitty gets this post because of my Shin obsession, plus the fairly weird dream I had last night, which I will put in later. Food now.
Music Additions: Wanna Talk - Bi / Rain, Oh! - Shinhwa, Fires at Midnight - Blackmore's Night [[Again]], Alone, What About Love, Don't Leave Me Like This, In The Mornin' - Heart, Fires at Midnight - Blackmore's Night [[Yes, *Again*]], WILD RUSH - T.M.Revolution, Heartbreaker - Pat Benatar, Bitch - Meredith Brooks, and Her Strut - Bob Seger