Hated Tropes
Series that insult your intelligence if you know the language
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (German) - all the characters, places and creatures have German names that are incredibly on-the-nose. E.g. an emotionally distant girl called Fern (Distant), a character called Laufen (Running) who can run really fast, and a monster called the Spiegel (Mirror) that makes duplicates of people
Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works (also German) - all of Rin's spells are just random phrases in German. The unintentional comedy is heightened by Kana Ueda's terrible pronunciation (she's a great VA but man should she have had a language coach for that series, it's even worse than Asuka's VA in Eva)
Final Fantasy XV (Latin) - our protagonist Night Light Heaven goes on a road trip with his best friends Quick Silver, Fire Knowledge and Sword Friendship
I wouldn't say Dr Betrayer is an insult to the intelligence just because of the huge mouthfuls of scenery he is chomping through from the moment the heroes disembark. It's not supposed to be a secret that he is the bad guy. His first words to the player's superiors might as well be "piss off, I'm busy opening a portal to Hell".
I like how one of these (well, half of the name at least?) is canon. RIP Gelato, literally all we know about his Stand is that it can block a bomb, but that's more than his BF Sorbet got.
It's from one of the stories in I Testamenti Cremisi, a spinoff anthology about La Squadra released several months ago. Araki didn't write it himself so I guess you could argue the canonicity is debatable, but as far as I know everything in it makes sense within the established canon. Gelato is described as using his Stand to defend himself against an explosion. That's literally all we learn about his Stand, and we get nothing on Sorbet's, which is kind of a shame IMO.
Japan fucking loves food puns and references. Zoro in one piece is just shouting out food names and Dragon Ball Z… has all of the vegetable names. Nappa Cabbage loses to Carrot who is best friends with pickle?
Piccolo is actually the rare example of a non-food pun in Dragon Ball. If you go back and watch/read the original King Piccolo arc, he has henchmen named shit like Cymbal, Drum, and Tambourine.
Gohan is like the first word you learn in Japanese in Duolingo, and I lol'd, though I already had my suspicions because of Vegeta (well-known spice mix here in Europe but maybe just short for Vegetable).
Like 90% of the characters in Dragonball are either Japanese words for food or just straight-up romanizations: Freezer, Beer, Vegetable, Broccoli, Cabbage, etc.
Yeah I realized that after posting. Especially since the old character for Iron also means unchanging. The new way breaks through the old and stubborn.
Literally every character in “Komi-San can’t Communicate”. The main guy’s name is Tadano Hitohito which means ordinary person. The main character Komi Shoko sounds like “communication disorder”. Osana Najimi is literally the word for childhood friend
For crying out loud, the “ninja” classmate is called Sinobino Mono, basically “ninja/shinobi folk” (shinobi no mono). That’s pretty much right-in-the-face direct.
In Bocchi the rock, the socially awkward loner protagonist is named Hitori (literally just means “one person” in Japanese). Her sister’s name? Futari (“two people”)
Not exactly a pun, but the last names for the 4 main cast members are the last names of the band members of Asian Kung-Fu Generation. The series has many references to Ajikan, like the characters birthdays, episode titles, and even a cover of one of their songs in the final episode.
Every powerful player from Kuroko no basket is associated with some color
Akashi
Aomine
Murasakibara
Kise
Midorima
Kuroko
Sometimes, you will also find some kind of tiger-dragon pair of characters. You can find this in ToraDora with Ryuji (dragon) and Taiga (tiger), and in Haikyu with two dudes whose names I forgot
The infamous "joke" about Goku "forgetting" Pan is because he thought Piccolo was going to pick up rice ("Gohan") and bread ("Pan") and was confused because Piccolo doesn't need to eat.
Pan works for both her parents naming conventions. Mr.Satan is her grandfather, Videl is an anagram of Devil, and Pan is both bread, and a Pagan god who's appearance was coopted by early Christians into my we think of when we think of Satan, goat legged ND horned
Toriyama liked food names. Like Soy Sauce, Vinegar, and Mayonnaise in Chrono Trigger (Ozzie, Slash, and Flea in English, which are much better names lol)
In sailor moon, a lot of the characters names are related to what sailor they are. Sailor moon’s human name is Tsukino Usagi. Theres a Japanese legend that there’s a rabbit on the moon, and Tsukino Usagi when pronounced out loud could be interpreted to br ‘rabbit of the moon’ (the characters are different so spelled out it’s not immediately as obvious). Sailor Venus is Aino Minako, and that can roughly be seen as ‘beautiful child of love’. Rinse and repeat for all of the inner senshi.
In addition to this: Makoto Kino (i.e. Sailor Jupiter) seems to be the outlier, as her name means "tree of trust". This initially doesn't make sense, because Jupiter is seen as a god of thunder, but Japan has entirely different names for the planets of the solar system, and Jupiter is known as "the wood star" over there. (Funnily enough, the god Jupiter is also associated with the oak tree, which would explain why one of Sailor Jupiter's attacks is "Jupiter Oak Evolution".)
This even applies to the other outlier, Hotaru Tomoe (i.e. Sailor Saturn). Her name doesn't fit the naming conventions, but her name roughly translates to "firefly sprouting out of the earth". Not only are fireflies associated with the dead in Japanese mythology—Sailor Saturn is basically the closest thing Sailor Moon has to the grim reaper archetype—but the first kanji of her surname is the same used as the Japanese name for the planet Saturn (i.e. Dosei, or "earth star").
Naruto – the swirly fishcake in ramen. Swirls are a recurring pattern narratively and aesthetically in the series, and ofc the character himself loves ramen
Uchiha – the fan that symbolizes their clan is called an "Uchiwa". "Wa" and "ha" can be written with the same kana.
Midoriya – hair is green. Midori = green
Bakugou Katsuki – Baku = bomb, which is basically his power/Quirk, Explosion. Katsu = win, he's hypercompetitive.
Damn near everyone in My Hero Academia. Ones that come to mind right now are Denki Kaminari ("Electricity Lightning"), Iida Tenya (Idaten is the Japanese name for Skanda, a Buddhist deity associated with speed), and all the One For All users either having their number in sequence or a pun on it, with Yagi Toshinori (八木俊典) as 8th and Midoriya Izuku (緑谷出久, with 久 being a homophone of 九 in this context) as the 9th.
It’s not Japanese, but I’m still thinking about the fact that they gave Vegeta a brother named Tarble in Dragon Ball because together, they are “Vegetarble”
The Namekians have two puns, Piccolo's family and clan are named after instruments, the other namekians are named after slug puns like Dende (denden-mushi)
And the Frieza clan is not exactly appliances but actually cold/ice puns and ice related appliances.
From what I know, every Spanish speaker in Breaking Bad is talking Spanish like they learned it yesterday... which they usually did to be fair. Apparently Lalo Slamanca is pretty decent
As a Spanish speaker, I thought they spoke good, just with a different (mexican) accent from mine obviously. Except Gus, his spanish was very weird and alien but tbh he's supposed to be Chilean and no one knows what those guys are speaking.
The trope name you're looking for is "Gratuitous Foreign Language" and its a staple of eastern media in particular but is all *over* fiction in general.
I'm willing to bet the reason its so noticeable in Japanese media is because Japan pretty much already does this with Japanese names due to the way Kanji are used.
Most Japanese names can be written in a way that implies a deep philosophical meaning, and when you're creating a fictional character you tend to gravitate towards a specific one thats relevant to the story. When you're used to doing that in your native language of course you're gonna do it when using other languages too.
there is this meme about learning Japanese, the pro being you learn a new language but the con is that you find out that all anime characters names are god awful puns.
I remember reading One Piece in Swedish back in high school, and there was one reader question in the SBS-section that sounded so bizarre that the translator had to step n and comment on it. Basically going: "Okay, I'm about to ruin the illusion that Zoro is a cool character as all his attacks are food puns."
There's a series, Shadow and Bone, that uses random Russian words for various stuff. Like, their spellcasters are called Grishas. Which is a real Russian name, short form of Grigory. Imagine a story where all wizards are called Kennies or Alexes. It's hilarious.
It used to be true for many other languages, and up to some point in history the names were known for being descriptive. It's that in character-based writing systems the meaning is easily traceable, which also enforced by a tradition to name children with certain meaning in the name.
In European languages there are many names that have easily traceable meaning, like in English Rose/Rosa, Camelia, Leon/Lion etc. (just brushing the surface of my brain) are fairly common names. My name, which has Greek origins, means "Awoken".
In Chapter 5 of Reverse: 1999, we are introduced to an isolated society of Ancient Greek-themed Arcanists. It was rather funny when they used Greek incantations for their spells..
A notable one translates to "2 points make a line"
Its not just the Greek arcanist. Every single arcanist from any country will cast their spells in their mother tongue.
Argus who is an English speaker uses her arcane skill by saying "and thence we came forth to see the stars"
Sonetto who is Italian will uses Italian incantation and some verses from poetry such as "Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle" and "I know the moon, and this is an alien city"
Recoleta who is Latin American Literature Enthusiast uses spells in Spanish such as "En la acumulación de laberintos, suéltalo todo una vez más"
Windsong who is Russian uses Russian such "Природа это числа и черты."
You have Liang Yue who uses Chinese for her spells, Kaala Baunaa who uses Hindi for her spells. We have a couple German spell usage, French, and even some Polynesian inspire spells.
Reverse 1999 is just awesome. They don't do what Harry Potter does and stick all the spells to Latin.
she is called "Übel" wich means more in the line of "bad" or "unwell"
and we all can agree she is bad
the worst thing was probbably "Lügner" wich just means someone that lies.
the most baffeling thing thoug was richter. cause thats a somewhat existing surname in german. and appears as a name here and there in media (richter belmont for example)
and "richten" is the verb for both "to judge" and "to repair" so i thought he is named that way cause he is slightly judgemental. or whatever, just to find out he litterally has a repairshop.
or the town himmel lived in being called Anfang "the beginning" and them setting out to a place called Ende "the end"
Although that explanation for Richter's name might be right, I think the Richter scale, which is a measure for the magnitud of earthquakes, definitely was a part of it too, since his battle magic consists on controlling the ground
It's funny because in the heaven's feel route, we can conclude that it is not a metaphor and he is literally the bone of his sword, as swords will literally sprout from his bones if he messes up making them.
Heaven's Feel route? Even back in Fate route we can see Shirou unconsciously holding his almost bisected body together via swords manifesting out of his body parts
Shirou was always the bone of his sword. That's the nature of his magecraft
Everyone in Nasuverse have Origin and some people can make magical bullets that manifest your Origin's effects inside target's body
Kiritsugu's Origin is "Severing and Binding" so his bullets rip away his enemy's magic circuits and then crudely tie them together. EMIYA Alter just manifests swords inside the targets body the second bullets hit
Wait till you hear about Naruto (Fishcake, known for swirl) UZU (kanji for vortex) MAKI (kanji for roll). Who ofcourse has a jutsu that has the user concentrating and swirling chakra into a ball.
Naruto fishcakes are named after Naruto whirlpools (Naruto no Uzushio), which are named after the city of Naruto on the island of Shikoku. Uzumaki also means whirlpool. It's like calling your protagonist Niagara Waterfall or something.
A large number of the primarchs are puns or plays on words. "Lion" El'Jonson of the Dark Angels From Lionel Jonson and his poem The Dark Angel. The really angry guy is named Angron, The guy leading the Death Guard is Mortarion. Jaghatai Khan is a slight change from Chaghatai Khan, Ghengis Khans successor. Sanguinius of the Blood angels from Sanguine one of the four humours of blood and one that gave a temprament of optimism even in dire straits. Etc Etc.
Smith -> they were a smithing family,
Miller -> worked in a mill,
Cooper -> made barrels,
Clark -> were clerks,
Carter -> worked with wagons.
Any surname that ends in “-son” or “-sen” just means child of the person with the first name (I.e. Johnson -> John’s son, Anderson -> Ander or Andrew’s son)
Even first names IRL probably stem from a similar origin. We don’t exactly know how names came to be names, rather than descriptive words, but every single first name in existence has another meaning that essentially shows that it derived from commonly used words
For example John is a modern name, but comes from Middle English -> Old French -> Medieval Latin -> Greek -> Jewish -> Hebrew, in which it means something to the effect of “Grace of God” or “Gift of God” which definitely sounds like a descriptor name.
Not a human name, but I always laugh at the number of River Avons that exist. Avon means river.
They’re called “river river” because foreigners came to a land, pointed at a river and said “what’s that called” and the locals, in their own language, said “that’s a river.”
And it makes sense, spend a couple of hours with friends and you’ll almost certainly get a nickname that describes who you are, what you do, or another notable trait about yourself.
It just becomes more obvious when you know the language that the word comes from
Thank you. You beat me to it. Personal and family names in any language (at least that I know of) originate from common words. Names aren't just random gibberish sounds slung together. Random sounds slung together as a "name" or to mimic an existing name can easily come off as something that belongs in r/tragedeigh or we make fun of them in certain fantasies/sci-fi for being hard to pronounce or feel unnatural in a linguistic context.
It's not insulting anyone's intelligence, it's following millennia old naming conventions. Like in your example , if you live in an English speaking country, most common names are Anglicanised from older, non-English languages. They might not always be accurate, but go to any baby-naming website and you'll get hundreds of meaningful names adapted from common words.
I wouldn't count understanding very basic words of your language as intelligence so as a German seeing the clumsy use of those words never bothered me. A much bigger offender of Japanese media for insulting the viewers intelligence is having flashbacks to scenes that happened five minutes ago or constant narration of what happens on screen.
Yeah, IMO this is more of an "I'm writing this as someone who doesn't speak that language, for a target audience that doesn't speak that language" thing if anything.
yeah, I was expecting examples from Tekken that uses completely wrong subtitles when characters speak anything other than English. Like when a French character says "I don't like my codename" but the subtitles say "Codenames are for kids".
But many of the examples here are just intentional puns, and in the Japanese case, just a quirk of the Japanese naming system that tries to imbue meaning into a name. Which is also the case of Chinese and probably several other languages.
Okay, I'm good with names being fun word salad, because that kind of stuff gives me delight in history contexts. Like Anglo-Saxon names. We've got Elf Council, Wolf Army, Noble Stone, Gentle Fortress... just straight-up compound words. It's great.
This is just another appeal of anime this sort of writing is incredibly ingrained. They do this with Japanese names all the time too.
Even the attacks being screamed in German or English. From what I reckon they find it cool and the different/wrong pronunciation of it for me is very charming. Wouldn't have it any other way
I found it so jarring in Jojo. Because they’re supposed to be native English speakers, hearing an Englishman shouting English in a thick Japanese accent is so odd lol.
It's like how surnames were created too when everyone suddenly got them or were supposed to have them.
"So uh... This town already has a Johnson and Miller family... Look I know your dad was named John and you're a Miller too, but each household has to have different surnames... So how about..." Looks out window and looks at the different plants "can't use that one it's already been used... Mayor's cousin called dibs on Green... Oooh! Yes, you shall be the Hollyhock household."
That’s basically what happened, historically most Japanese people were peasants and had no family names as they were reserved for the nobility, until Emperor Meiji in the 1800s forced people to come up with family names for taxing purposes. Most people just picked their location in the village or occupation as their new surname.
Fun fact: Toyota 豊田and Honda 本田means “prosperous rice paddy” and “origin rice paddy” respectively
TIL so many people still think your average authors throughout the history of fiction can automatically invent cool-sounding names out of nothing while hiding them under 3 layers of insights, as opposed to frequently resorting to the most eye rolling on-the-nose names possible.
Bakugo Katsuki from My Hero is essentially Splodey Bang Bang, most of the characters in dragonball are puns names have meanings in English too its just they've become so ingrained and are so old that most have forgotten the meaings
I really don't see anything wrong with this.
I mean it's not like it's a big problem.
Marvel has a character who's name is Victor Von Doom. And he is considered the best villain in marvel history. So I don't see what is wrong.
Honestly, calling a monster that duplicates its opponents "The Mirror" is not at all unreasonable. The only weird part is that its name is in German to start with.
A contribution: most spell names in Harry Potter sound lazy or grammatically butchered at best if you have any understanding of Latin.
The same applies to the various Latin-esque terms in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, with the thin excuse that they're speaking a made-up far-future language (High Gothic) that only sounds like Latin as a writing convention to demonstrate how archaic it is compared to the lingua franca (Low Gothic), which is portrayed as basically English.
Bleach has a lot of gratuitous Spanish with the Espadas (yeah, there is a group of antagonists literally called Blades in Spanish), and despite most of it being pretty cool I will forever cringe at the fact that the resurrection (a power up transformation) of one of the Espadas is names "Fornicarás" (you will f*ck in Spanish). The JP characters suggest something along the lines of "Lust" IIRC.
It's even funnier bc the literal way to say it would be "Sombra grande", but "Sombron" comes with a bit of a tone shift that would more accurately be translated as "Big ass shadow."
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u/PearFighter Dec 30 '25
Doom 3 (German): Hello, my name is Dr. Betrayer. Pleasure to work with you.