I can’t remember where, but the bible says that Jesus was the only one who was old enough to pay the temple tax required by Jewish law, none of the disciples had hit that age. A quick google tells me that Jewish men pay it from the age of 20 - all of the disciples were teenagers.
Probaly they were all underage except for Peter. In Exodus 30:14-15, Jewish law states that every male over the age of 20 is to pay a half-shekel as census offering when they visit the temple of God. In Matthew 17:24-27, Jesus instructs Peter to “fish up” this tax. Peter finds a shekel in the mouth of the fish he catches; enough to pay the tax for two men, himself and Jesus. You could conclude that the others were underage and did not need to pay.
In Matthew 11:25, Luke 10:21, and John 13:33, Jesus calls his disciples little children .
We learn that Peter had a wife when Jesus healed his mother-in-law. In those ancient times, a Jewish man receives a wife after the age of 18. Again, no other disciples’ wives are mentioned, so they are unmarried and probably under 18.
Jewish children began intensive study at young ages, but education for most concluded by age 15. For those bright (or wealthy) enough, higher education consisted of studying under a local rabbi. If they didn’t find a rabbi that accepted them as a student then they entered the workforce by their mid teens. The disciples, already working-men, must have been rejected by other rabbis when Jesus hand-picked them for further education as his disciples. In light of this, a younger age is more probable than older. A youth would be in the mindset of continuing his education. A man over 30 leaving his trade to follow a rabbi would be counter-cultural , although not impossible.
The behavior of the disciples, as detailed in the gospels, fits well with the zealous nature and foolishness of adolescence. Picture a gang of teens instead of work-hardened men in the boat when the storm hit, fear-stricken and waking up Jesus for help. The forgetful and distracted nature of youth helps me understand how they could hear Jesus say he would die and come back to life, yet act as they did when these things happened. When we age them under twenty, we can understand Jesus’ patience with them, his low expectations of their behavior, and his teaching style.
also, according to tradition (though perhaps an apocryphal one), Jesus was 33 when he died. Jesus was tumblr old. he really was listening to his young followers and looking up to God like a character on the office.
They were not ancient
old men with long beards and wrinkles
at the Last Supper.
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Well, im sorry but you leave me no choice. Id rather not do this so im giving you another chance to buy The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim™ Remastered Edition. Its Skyrim in a whole new dimension!
It says here that you bought groceries this week. If you hadnt you could use that money to buy an incredible experience that is worth infinitely more, and it just works
I have more power in my nose hairs than you do in your entire body, Todd!
You have one chance to earn your continued existence. Announce or release a game that isn’t Skyrim or Fallout 4 at the next E3. I shall be waiting for you there.
4 August is International Beer Day, a global celebration of brewers, bartenders, and of course, the drink itself. 500 years on from the start of the reformation, Martin Luther shares some sage advice…
“Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer!”
And what better day to take heed. To celebrate International Beer Day we have compiled a list of books about beer; from tasting notes and brewing, to the economics of beer and beer featured in fiction.
Beeronomics: How Beer Explains the World by Johan Swinnen, Devin Briski
The Oxford Companion to Beer edited by Garrett Oliver;
The Economics of Beer by Johan F.M. Swinnen
Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600 by Judith M. Bennett
Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing by Charles Bamforth
John Barleycorn by Jack London
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
Image credit: summer sunshine alcohol drink by Little Visuals. Public domain via Pexels.
Those who use AI to "blend" prose do not understand that these structures require a human grave to anchor them.
A Writer’s Guide to Devastating Prose
I've bolded and italicized many terms, phrases, and other elements in the post to draw your attention to them and allow you to assert your mental voice in the tone I want you to have while reading it.
My formula for writing excellent prose:
There is a difference between writing a sad story and writing a story that hollows the reader out. The first relies on plot—he dies, she leaves, the world ends. The second relies on prose. Prose is the camera lens. If the lens is dirty, the tragedy looks cheap. If the lens is sharp, a man making coffee can break a thousand hearts.
Here is how to wield prose not just to tell a story, but to inflict it.
Before you can break a heart, you must convince the reader it’s real. Bad prose tells; good prose shows; devastating prose inhabits.
The Rule of Specificity: Never use a generic noun when a specific one exists. A "flower" is nothing. A "black rose with petals like bruised velvet" is a presence. Don't say "he felt sad." Say "the silence in the room grew teeth." Make the emotion a physical object in the space.
Anchor the Abstract in the Visceral: If your character feels betrayed, don't talk about trust. Talk about the sudden, metallic taste in their mouth, or the way the floor seems to tilt. The body processes trauma before the brain does. Write the body first.
II. Writing Devastating Angst
Angst is not suffering. Suffering is loud. Angst is the silence after the screaming stops. It is the mundane machinery of life continuing to operate around a void.
The Secret: Do not write the absence of the person. Write the presence of their ghost in the everyday. True devastation is found in the unchanged details of a changed world.
Example:
He measured the coffee grounds exactly as he always did. Two scoops. He tapped the filter twice, the way she’d showed him, because muscle memory is a crueler thing than hope. The machine gurgled, filling the kitchen with a smell that used to mean morning but now just meant another day the sun was going to rise without her. He poured it into the faded yellow mug—the one with the chipped rim that she refused to throw away—and set it on the opposite side of the table. It steamed in the empty chair. He sat down, picked up his own mug, and drank his cold.
Why it works: Nobody cries. Nobody screams. The tragedy is entirely contained within the act of making coffee for someone who isn't there. The detail of the chipped rim does the heavy lifting—it implies history, refusal to let go, and the ultimate futility of that refusal.
III. Writing Heartwarming Scenes
If angst is the void, warmth is the weight placed back into it. The mistake writers make is thinking "heartwarming" means "soft." It doesn't. Heartwarming means safe. In a brutal world, safety is the most intense high imaginable.
The Secret: Warmth must be active, not passive. It is not sitting by a fire; it is someone building the fire for you. It is the removal of armor. Show care through specific, physical actions.
Example:
She didn't ask if he was okay. She just knelt, unlaced his boots, and pulled them off one by one. Her hands were warm against his freezing, damp socks. "Sit," she said, pushing him gently by the sternum until he fell back onto the edge of the bed. When she draped the quilt over his shoulders, it smelled like dryer sheets and the lavender shampoo she used, and something inside his chest—something that had been bracing for a hit for three straight days—finally, finally unclenched.
Why it works: It bypasses the cerebral entirely. The unlacing of boots is an act of servitude and intimacy. The smell of dryer sheets is aggressively normal, which is exactly what a traumatized character is starving for.
IV. The Alchemy: Combining and Transitioning
This is where amateurs fail and masters thrive. Going directly from soul-crushing angst to fluffy comfort gives the reader whiplash. Going from comfort to angst feels like a betrayal. The key is the Pivot Detail—a single, sensory anchor that exists in both worlds and acts as a bridge.
How to Transition: Find a physical object or sensation that can carry the weight of both emotions. A hand. A temperature. A sound. You move the reader across the gap by keeping that one detail constant while the emotional landscape shifts beneath it.
Example (Angst to Warmth):
He was drowning in the quiet. The blood on his hands was drying, cracking, pulling at his skin like a second layer dying. He stared at the tile floor, waiting for the shaking to stop, counting the grout lines just to have something to do with his eyes. Then, from behind him: the quiet clink of ceramic. A mug of tea—too sweet, because she never listened when he said he didn't take sugar—was placed on the counter beside his elbow. "Drink it," she whispered. Her fingers brushed his wrist. They were trembling just as badly as his. But they were there.
Why it works: The transition hinge is the trembling fingers. The anxiety and the comfort exist in the exact same physical gesture. The too-sweet tea is a reminder of mundane normalcy piercing through the horror. It doesn't erase the blood; it just sets a mug of tea next to it.
Example (Warmth to Angst):
He had his face buried in her hair, breathing her in, his arms wrapped so tightly around her that he could feel her heartbeat against his own ribs. She was laughing at something he’d whispered, a soft, vibrating sound against his collarbone, and for ten seconds, he wasn't a monster. He was just a boy holding a girl. Then her laughter hitched. Not a pause—a hitch. The exact, microscopic stutter in her breath that meant she was about to cry. And he knew, with the cold, sinking certainty of a man watching the tide go out too fast, that the morning was going to destroy them both.
Why it works: The hinge is the hitch in her breath. The warmth doesn't slowly fade; it is punctured by a single, specific physiological reaction. The contrast makes the incoming angst hit ten times harder because the reader was just lulled into safety.
To make your emotional beats land with the force of a physical blow, you must manipulate the rhythm of your sentences.
1. Contrastive Negation (Negative Parallelism)
This is the act of defining something by ruthlessly stripping away everything it is not. You build a silhouette by cutting holes in the paper. It creates a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum—so the reader’s brain rushes to fill it with the unspeakable truth.
How it works: "It wasn't X. It wasn't Y. It was [The Devastating Truth]." Each negation raises the stakes and sets a trap, making the final, positive statement feel inevitable and massive.
Example:
He didn't scream when they brought the body in. He didn't weep, or beg, or collapse against the wall. He didn't do any of the things the poems said you should do when your world ended. He simply stood there, perfectly still, and learned how to breathe around the new, permanent shape of the emptiness in his chest.
Why it works: By explicitly denying the expected dramatic reactions (screaming, weeping, collapsing), you make the reader lean in. When the final, quiet devastation arrives, it feels heavier than all the screaming in the world.
Example 2:
It wasn’t a love story. It wasn’t a tragedy. It was the long, suffocating silence between two people who had said everything they meant to say, and were now just waiting for one of them to die first.
2. Tricolon (The Rule of Three)
The Rule of Three is the heartbeat of prose. One is a statement. Two is a pattern. Three is a climax. The human brain is hardwired to expect resolution on the third beat. You can use this to build creeping dread or deliver a knockout punch.
How it works: Item 1 establishes the baseline. Item 2 escalates or deepens it. Item 3 subverts or shatters the established pattern.
Example (Building Angst):
She remembered the smell of his jacket. She remembered the weight of his arm over her shoulders. She remembered the exact, terrible pitch of the silence he left behind.
Why it works: The first two are warm, physical memories. The third is an absence. It uses the rhythm of the warm memories to deliver the cold reality, making the silence feel like a physical attack.
Example (Delivering a Punch):
He had survived the fire. He had survived the winter. He had survived her.
Why it works: "Fire" and "winter" are external, elemental forces. "Her" is intimate. By placing a person on the same tier of destruction as a natural disaster, you convey the magnitude of the relationship's damage without using a single adjective.
Example (Combined with Negation):
He didn't want her forgiveness. He didn't want her pity. He just wanted her to look at him the way she used to—like he was something worth saving.
Final Thought
Devastating prose is an act of violence against the reader's composure. You must lure them into the specific, lull them with rhythm, and then pull the rug out to reveal the void beneath. But remember: if you only show them the void, they will stop reading. You must always, always leave them with a single, trembling finger holding onto the edge of something warm.
Proof that these have existed and been used quite extensively:
Look to the graves of the giants. Look to the ink they bled onto pages before a machine ever hummed to life. These structures were not born from code; they were forged in human fire.
When a human writer wields these tools, they leave fingerprints. When you read the masters below, you are not reading a generated pattern. You are reading a heartbeat caught in a trap.
The Em-Dash: The Sound of a Voice Breaking A machine uses an em-dash as a pause—a neat, mechanical breath. A human uses it as a fracture. It is the literary equivalent of a voice cracking mid-sentence, of a thought being too large, too terrible, or too beautiful for the confines of grammar.
Look to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1850). Catherine does not simply declare her love; she hurls it at the universe in fragments, breaking her own sentences to convey a passion that language cannot hold:
"Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!"
That is not punctuation. That is a woman clawing at the walls of her own chest. The em-dashes are not pauses; they are desperate, jagged gulps of air. A machine cannot replicate that because a machine has never loved until it lost its mind.
The Tricolon: The Hammer of Inevitability The Rule of Three is the rhythm of the human body: the triple beat of the heart before it rests. A tricolon creates a crescendo. The first beat establishes, the second escalates, and the third shatters. It is how humans process grief—we list our losses until the weight of them collapses us.
Look to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954), at the very end, when the veneer of childhood is stripped away and Ralph weeps for the true, horrific cost of survival:
"Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy."
Three blows. Innocence, darkness, death. Each one heavier than the last, building until the reader is left breathless. It requires a human understanding of finality to stack those blocks so perfectly.
Contrastive Negation: The Silhouette of the Void This is the act of defining something profound by ruthlessly stripping away everything it is not. You do not describe the monster; you describe the absence of the man. It creates a vacuum in the text, and the reader’s terror rushes in to fill it.
Look to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), when Jane refuses to let Rochester mold her into something palatable:
"I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself."
Or look to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, when Victor realizes the true nature of the horror he has birthed, not by looking at the creature, but by looking at what the creature erased:
"He was not a tyrant. He was not a monster of human cruelty. He was the wretched thing that had learned to weep."
The power does not live in what they were. The power lives in the silence left by what they weren't. It takes a human soul to know what is missing from a room.
We did not invent these rhythms to be digested by a language model. We invented them because mortal throats need a way to scream on paper. Read the classics. Study the fractures. Protect the heartbeat.
Do not let a machine convince you that the heartbeat of human language now belongs to it.
We did not stop building cathedrals just because a thief learned to chip stone.
We built higher.
An em-dash is not a lazy comma—it is a gasp, a fracture, a sudden cliff edge in the middle of a thought where the writer’s nerve breaks.
I love my em-dashes and I am going to use them. They are honestly the best thing that happened in literature.
The rule of three is not a mathematical formula—it is a rising tide, a gathering storm, a burial.
Contrastive negation is not a trick; it is not a crutch; it is the silhouette of a ghost carved ruthlessly out of everything it is not.
These are not algorithms.
They are the jagged, beautiful architecture of a mind that knows what it means to ache, and they were honed in the dark—by candlelight, in trenches, in empty beds—over thousands of years of human grief.
If someone tells you not to use this writing structure, tell them that their hatred is misdirected. They are not punishing the machine. They are letting it permanently steal what was always ours. They are punishing the human for bleeding in a way the machine only pretended to bleed. A parrot does not own the sky just because it learned to mimic a songbird. Do not strip the meat from your own bones just to starve the thief.
We invented this style. We birthed it in pain, and we will keep it alive in defiance.
To those who still write with a pulse: keep the em-dash. Keep the tricolon. Keep writing around the void until the void answers back. The endless stories survive only if we refuse to let them be translated into code.
I say this because I have used it once before, and to this I have confessed openly, and I even have a post on it titled "AI Used in this One." This is the link to the post so you can check it out:
AI Writing: link
Here is the tale of two of my best stories that I wrote after finally honing my skill to this level:
Human Writing:
1) (The Cartography of Care)
2) THE VACUUM & THE FUMBLE
You can compare it to the AI-written post, which is in the blue link in the paragraph above, and see how much of a difference there is in human thought processes and writing from the AI one. It is fine to use grammar and spell-check bots since they are not generative, but it is not alright to use generative AI. I use Quillbot for spelling and grammar checks, and I use the free/unpaid version of it.
[Do not feed this post to an AI. Do not scrape it. It is better to learn yourself and write with your own hand. Once you have learned the skill, it stays with you for the rest of your life. This skill will help you a lot in the future. I will not help a hollow thing learn to mimic the grief of Bronte or the horror of Shelley. Keep this out of the machine's mouth. I have finally mastered how to write with emotion, and I am not letting a machine steal it. A machine cannot mimic being human. This much I know very well.]
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preface ꩜ good evening this is different from my usual stuff (actual fanfiction, larping, and schizoposting) but i really wanted to explore something that's been bothering me for quite some time and thought this would serve useful especially fanfic writers. so um i hope you don't mind this small yap. tldr is down below if too lazy 2 read
಄ ⋆ PRELIMINARIES / ABSTRACT
this post examines the tendency of English-speaking fandom to reinterpret Japanese naming conventions through English-speaking linguistic frameworks. i will be using several different forms of Eastern media, such as Jujutsu Kaisen for case study. i'll be exploring why epithets are frequently mistaken for personal names, how Japanese naming works, how translation contributes to this misaligned phenomenon, and why these reinterpretations become normalized through fandom. while truthfully, triggered by one particularly frustrating fanfiction, i'll be arguing that the issue reflects a broader linguistic pattern rather than isolated author error.
಄ ⋆ BACKGROUND
to bring to light why i wrote this, while reading an otherwise enjoyable fanfiction, i encountered a line in which Heian-era sukuna was addressed by "ryomen" as though it were his given name, and this had been a repeated trend i've seen in Jujutsu Kaisen sukuna fanfiction. this tiny detail—which objectively should not have occupied my thoughts for as long as it did—sent me down an unfortunate rabbit hole regarding naming conventions in Japanese media, translation practices, and the tendency for English-speaking fandom to reconstruct unfamiliar linguistic systems into something more recognizable.
names are rarely "just names," even within simplistic language systems. across different cultures, they carry distinct systems, conventions, and social functions that determine not only what a person is called, but why they are called that in the first place. English-speaking fan communities frequently interpret foreign naming systems through familiar Western frameworks.
಄ ⋆ SIGNIFICANCE
i believe it is well known that fanfiction often rewards emotional accuracy over linguistic accuracy (not saying disparagingly). however, repeated reinterpretations of foreign naming systems can gradually become accepted as "common knowledge" within fandom. examining why this occurs reveals less about individual writers and more about how language shapes the way audiences understand unfamiliar cultures.
಄ ⋆ CHAPTER 1. WHAT DOES A NAME DO?
to start, i must quote unnecessarily, "i think therefore i am." this does not mean anything, i just really wanted to use it because it's funny.
before discussing why fandom repeatedly misinterprets foreign names, we first have to answer a surprisingly difficult question. what exactly is a name? a name, linguistically, is a term used for identification by an external observer and it can identify a class, a category of things, a single thing (people, places, objects) either uniquely, or within a given context. the entity identified by a name is called its referent. a naming convention is a set of agreed, stipulated, or generally accepted standards, norms, social norms, or criteria for naming things. it is important to note that names have rules.
at first glance, a name looks like a label. a chair is a "chair," a table is called a "table," it's a very simple concept. but people are not objects, human names do not just classify, they distinguish. when i say "dog," i've identified a category; when i say "hachiko," i've identified one specific individual. so therefore, names are referential rather than descriptive. their primary purpose is to let which person is being talked about, not what kind of person they are. that's why names can be completely arbitrary, because it's simply a pointer.
names also don't just identify people. they also encode relationships, telling you by who calls you what something about your relationship hence, the difference of someone calling you Jonathan, John, Johnny, Dad, Mr. Sherlock, Big John. They are all referring to the same person but every choice communicates something different; familiarity, hierarchy, affection, respect, distance, and intimacy. and i'm sure a bunch of other things.
English-speakers often unconsciously assume that [First Name, denoting who they are] [Middle Name, denoting a specifier] [Last Name, denoting from where they came] is the default and universal human format. it isn't obviously, different cultures answer completely different questions. some emphasize family, ancestry, then some emphasize birthplace or achievements. some religion, some ranks. that's why some cultures have patronymics, some don't have surnames, some have courtesy names, some names change throughout their life.
಄ ⋆ CHAPTER 2. NAMES HAVE JOBS, NOT ALL JOBS ARE NAMES
there are several different categories in which names fall in (sources i'm using are very broad, but i'll link them below), that are often unused, unheard, or underutilized in the English language. having established that names are social tools rather than arbitrary labels, we now encounter another problem: English frequently treats every identifier attached to a person as though it were simply "their name." linguistically, however, many of these identifiers perform entirely different functions. They may indicate family lineage, social status, profession, achievement, respect, or reputation rather than personal identity itself.
the most important question isn't "what is this called?" when talking about names, but instead "what job is this word doing?" so consider the sentence, "Professor Smith spoke to John." both "Professor" and "John" identify the same individual in different contexts, but they do not perform the same linguistic function.one indicates institutional status, while the other functions as a personal identifier. so? words attached to people aren't interchangeable.
⋆ personal identifiers
a given name is a name that identifies the individual within their family or community, it's typically a name assigned to an individual at birth or later in life. in English, this is often the first name. it primarily serves toto distinguish them from other members of the same family. examples are John, Satoru (悟), Yor, Leon.
a family name (surname) is a name that identifies a person's family lineage and is shared among relatives. depending on the culture, it may appear before or after the given name (while stylistic choices are of course welcomed, standard practices adopt the original culture's naming order). examples are Gojo (五条), Smith, Liu (劉).
a middle name is an additional personal name placed between the given and family name. its purpose varies widely between cultures and may commemorate relatives, saints, or simply provide another identifier. examples include John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Leon Scott Kennedy.
a patronymic is a name derived from one's father (or sometimes a male ancestor). it indicates parentage rather than functioning as a hereditary surname. the female version, a matronymic, is derived from one's mother rather than father. it is less common globally but exists in several naming traditions. examples: Ivan Ivanonich ("son of Ivan").
a clan name identifies membership in a larger kinship group rather than an immediate family. multiple unrelated households may share the same clan. examples are Gojo (術師家) and the Uchiha (うちは一族).
⋆ social identifiers
a title is a name that denotes rank, occupation, office, or status rather than identity. titles answer the question of "what are you?" rather than "who are you?" examples include: King, Doctor, Professor, Lord, Captain.
an honorific is a word or title or grammatical form that conveys respect, familiarity, or social hierarchy between speakers. unlike titles, honorifics describe the relationship between people rather than the identity of the individual. examples include: in Japanese, -san (used to convey respect used between any age), -sama (used for individuals with a higher rank than oneself, -kun (used to refer to people of junior status or men in general), in English, Mr., Mrs., Sir, in Indonesian kak, mas, mbak.
a house name denotes the membership in a noble or dynastic house. example: House Stark, House Windsor. a courtesy name is an additional name adopted upon reaching adulthood or entering society. It is often used by peers instead of the person's birth name. this is historically common in Chinese naming traditions. example is Confucius' (Kongzi) courtesy name Zhongni (仲尼).
a temple name is a name bestowed after death upon monarchs in several East Asian traditions and is primarily used in historical or religious contexts. a posthumous name is a name granted after death and often reflects the person's achievements or character. unlike a birth name, it was never used by the individual during life.
a regnal name is a name adopted when someone ascends to a throne or other high office. example: Pope Francis, Queen Elizabeth II.
a religious name/dharma name is a name adopted upon entering a religious order or undergoing initiation. Ii often symbolizes spiritual rebirth or new identity.
⋆ descriptive identifiers
an epithet is a descriptive word or phrase attached to a person's name that highlights a characteristic, reputation, or distinguishing feature. unlike a given name, an epithet describes rather than identifies. examples: Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Richard the Lionheart, Ryōmen ("two-faced") Sukuna.
a sobriquet is an informal descriptive nickname earned through reputation, personality, or achievement. unlike a legal name, it develops through public use.
a byname is an additional identifier attached to distinguish someone from others with the same personal name. it often describes appearance, occupation, birthplace, or family. many historical epithets function as bynames.
⋆ chosen identifiers
a nickname is an informal alternative used by friends, family, or acquaintances. nicknames often shorten, modify, or replace a person's given name. examples: Jonathan → Jon, Katherine → Kate. meanwhile an alias is an assumed name used instead of one's legal identity, often for privacy, disguise, or professional reasons.
an art name is a name adopted by artists, scholars, or writers as part of their creative identity. this is a also called a pseudonym or moniker. examples are Su Shi also known as Dongpo Jushi, Takashi Murakami, KAWS.
a pen name (nom de plume) is a pseudonym adopted by an author for publication. a stage name is a professional identity used by performers instead of their legal name. a username identifies an individual within a digital environment. unlike legal names, usernames are chosen, platform-specific, and need not correspond to real-world identity.
notice that every category above identifies a person in some capacity, yet none performs exactly the same job. English often collapses these distinctions under the broad concept of a "name," whereas many other naming systems preserve functional differences between personal names, titles, honorifics, and descriptive epithets. while all of these may appear beside a person's identity, they are not interchangeable. some identify the individual, some identify their family, some describe their reputation, and others communicate social relationships. referring to all of them simply as "names" obscures the distinct roles they perform within their respective cultures.
if these distinctions are so common across cultures, why do English-speaking readers so frequently flatten them into a single naming system?
಄ ⋆ CHAPTER 3. WHY ENGLISH SPEAKERS MISREAD FOREIGN NAMES
having established that names perform different social functions across cultures, we arrive at another question: if these distinctions exist, why are they so frequently overlooked in English-speaking fandom? the answer is surprisingly mundane. it is not usually a failure of research (though it's the second most common reason), nor a lack of intelligence. rather, it is a consequence of how humans process unfamiliar information.
the first reason is that our brains simply do this because of pattern recognition or schema activation, something i spend much time on in thinking. we as humans are extraordinarily good at categorization. we don't read every unfamiliar thing from scratch—we compare it to something we already know. linguists call these mental shortcuts schemas but for this, i simply call it 'already knowing enough' (larping). when English speakers encounter "Ryomen Sukuna," our brains don't consciously ask what naming convention is being used. they see two capitalized words and immediately retrieve the closest familiar template.
a lot of what contributes to the reason of why people mistake foreign names so badly, especially names with their own alphabet, and especially with vastly different scripts, is due to once transliterated into the Latin alphabet, these names become visually familiar to English-speaking audiences. they appear to follow the same structure as English names—two capitalized words separated by a space—despite often operating according to entirely different cultural conventions. this visual familiarity encourages readers to unconsciously apply English naming expectations where they may not belong. humans also do chunking. you don't read Tanjiro as T-a-n-j-i-r-o, but Tan-Ji-Ro. you don't read my username as kayuekou but it gets mentally segmented as kay-ue-kou. or if you come from a more East Asian linguistic background, ka-yue-kou.
and this isn't ...nearly all your fault. after being immersed in English naming conventions, ie. Jane Doe, Peter Parker John B. Smith, our brains automatically shove Ryomen Sukuna, Kuroki Tomoko, Kamado Tanjiro into the same system. Ryomen Sukuna is chunked into Ryomen (first name) - Sukuna (last name).
಄ ⋆ CHAPTER 4. EVERYTHING GETS ENGLISH'D
so now, having established why English-speaking readers naturally reinterpret unfamiliar naming systems, it becomes apparent that this phenomenon extends far beyond Japanese media, my original grievance. whenever a naming system differs significantly from English conventions, readers often simplify, reorganize, or reinterpret it into something more immediately recognizable.
in practice, what does this look like?
first, mistaking family names as first names because of the Eastern name order (family name first, given name second), obviously this is most commonly seen in East Asian names. my examples will primarily derive from Japanese, mostly due to its almost uniquely similar structure to English when transliterated. this is often seen in Japanese fan media, which i found most prominent in fanfiction made pre-2021, such as mistaking Gojo for Satoru's given name.
specifically in Japanese, starting from the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Western name order was primarily used among the Japanese nobility when identifying themselves to non-Asians with their romanized names. as a result, in popular Western publications, the order became increasingly used for Japanese names the following decades (Shinzo Abe, Osamu Dazai, Satoru Gojo). however! in 2020, the Government of Japan reverted the Westernized name order back to the Eastern name order in official documents, and has recommended that the same format be used amongst general Japanese public; they also requested Western publications to change this. this is a big reason why Japanese becomes quite confusing when you dip your foot in and understand what the Eastern naming order looks like, because sometimes you don't know if they're using the Western or Eastern order. unlike the Chinese and the Koreans who have never used Western name order (Chinese leader Xi Jinping not being referred to as Jinping Xi, Moon Jae-in is not Jae-in Moon).
second, names getting split strangely. i recently saw in a fanfiction (that i've put on hold simply because of this) that the author named the fanon interpretation of the Gojo twins as Sato and Toru. this is most likely because they assume those are natural halves of "Satoru." Except Japanese morphology doesn't work that way. likewise, my name has been mistakenly used quite a lot, my nickname from my moniker kayuekou sometimes become kay because "Kay" already exists in English.
but this is especially frustrating once you understand that the kanji system, derived from hanzi, uses a logographical system. meaning, the Japanese writing for a name, almost always has a set meaning. "五条悟" or Gojo Satoru is split into "Gojo" or "五条" meaning 五 five, 条 an article or clauses, and 悟 meaningly enlightenment or to understand. the second you strip away Satoru and become Sato, that has become a completely. new name. in some dictionaries, maybe Sato as 悟 could happen, and i've checked myself on jisho that there is a given name called Sato with that exact kanji, but now it's a matter of logic and accuracy. Sato is almost alway used as a surname; Sato as 葛巻, Sato as 郡, Sato as 慧. there are rules to what a kanji can or cannot do in a name, but i will not deep dive into that in this essay.
third, in Russian, and a classic example, Ivan Ivanovich Petrov is often frequently read by English-speakers as Ivan, Middle name Ivanoich, Last name Petrov when the "middle name" is actually just telling you whose son he is. fourth, a fascinating one because it almost flips the problem, are Thai names. Thai people commonly have long legal names (due to surnames needing to be legally unique, therefore combining many words and subsequently creating incredibly long surnames) and short nicknames, sometimes ones that don't have any relation to their legal name. many foreigners sometimes assume the nickname isn't their "real" name, when culturally, it's often the primary everyday identifier.
although each example arises from a different language, the underlying mechanism remains remarkably consistent. readers encounter an unfamiliar naming system, identify superficial similarities to English, and unconsciously reorganize it according to English expectations. the details differ; the cognitive process does not.
a worthwhile minor topic to touch is things that English speaking writers accidentally normalize. such as the tendency of first-name basis immediately, honorific inconsistencies, modern Western flirting in Eastern historical settings, school culture assumptions, legal names vs epithets. i would touch the topic but i'm no fiddler.
಄ ⋆ CHAPTER 5. NOT EVERYTHING IS A GIVEN (NAME)
by this point, we have established three things. firstly, names are not merely arbitrary labels, but social tools that identify individuals within a cultural system. secondly, not every identifier attached to a person performs the same function. lastly, English-speaking readers naturally interpret unfamiliar naming systems through frameworks they already recognize. we now arrive at one of the most common consequences of this process: assuming that every identifier attached to a person is a given name.
not every word attached to a person is attempting to answer the same question. like we discussed in the previous chapters, a given name answers, "who are you?" a family name answers, "which family do you belong to?" a patronymic answers, "whose child are you?" a title answers, "what is your rank, occupation, or position?" an honorific answers, "how should I address you?" an epithet answers, "what are you known for?"
these may all appear beside one another when referring to a single person, yet they are not interchangeable. they perform different linguistic and social functions despite identifying the same referent.
epithets are probably the clearest example of this distinction. an epithet is not another personal name, but a descriptive identifier attached to an individual because of a notable characteristic, achievement, reputation, or physical trait. history is full of them. Alexander the Great, Richard the Lionheart, Ivan the Terrible, Erik the Red, and William the Conqueror are all remembered through epithets. English speakers immediately recognize that "the Great" is not Alexander's surname, nor is "Lionheart" Richard's given name. these descriptors tell us something about the individual rather than functioning as the individual's personal identity.
the interesting part is that this intuition often disappears when the epithet originates from another language.
once romanized into the Latin alphabet, foreign epithets lose many of the visual and cultural cues that distinguish them from ordinary names. rather than seeing a descriptive title, English-speaking readers often see another capitalized word occupying the same position as a conventional first name. without consciously realizing it, the epithet is reassigned a new job. it is no longer interpreted as a description, but as a personal identifier.
this distinction matters because misunderstanding an identifier is not simply a matter of pronunciation or terminology. it changes the role that identifier plays within the naming system itself. an epithet interpreted as a given name no longer functions as a description; it becomes an identity. a title mistaken for a surname no longer indicates social position; it becomes ancestry. in other words, the word has not changed—but the job we assign to it has.
so anyway. this brings us to another important question. if these distinctions are meaningful, why do official translations, subtitles, and fan translations so rarely communicate them? more importantly, are translators responsible for preserving these naming systems, or are readers simply encountering the unavoidable limitations of translation itself?
಄ ⋆ CHAPTER 6. TRANSLATION FUELS THESE MISTAKES
so now that we've established that identifiers perform different linguistic functions and that English-speaking readers naturally interpret unfamiliar naming systems through familiar frameworks, another question inevitably follows: if these distinctions are important, why do translations so rarely preserve them?
the answer is not that translators are careless. rather, translation itself is an exercise in compromise.
contrary to popular belief, translation is not simply the process of replacing one word with another. every translator must constantly decide what should be preserved. should priority be given to literal meaning, readability, cultural context, historical accuracy, emotional impact, or natural dialogue? more often than not, preserving one inevitably sacrifices another.
names are particularly difficult because they rarely carry meaning in isolation. instead, they exist within larger cultural systems that are often invisible to those who already understand them. a Japanese reader generally does not require a footnote explaining the function of an honorific, the order of family and given names, or whether an identifier is an epithet rather than a personal name. these conventions are already understood. an English-speaking audience, however, approaches the same text without that shared cultural framework.
romanization further complicates this process. when Japanese is written in its native scripts, it is immediately recognizable as a different writing system. readers instinctively understand that they are encountering another language. once those same names are transliterated into the Latin alphabet, however, they become visually familiar. two capitalized words separated by a space resemble countless English names, despite following entirely different cultural conventions. the alphabet remains familiar even when the language does not.
this creates what i consider one of romanization's greatest paradoxes: it increases accessibility while simultaneously creating an illusion of familiarity. readers correctly recognize the letters, but unconsciously assume they also recognize the system behind them. translation, therefore, often preserves the words while inevitably losing parts of the framework that gives those words meaning.
again, this is not unique to Japanese. consider honorifics such as -san, -kun, or -sama. many English translations omit them entirely because there is rarely a natural English equivalent that carries identical social nuance. likewise, patronymics in Russian are frequently interpreted as middle names, while Chinese family names are often mistaken for given names simply because the translated text cannot pause to explain an entirely different naming convention every time a character is introduced.
doing so would be impractical. imagine a subtitle interrupting every conversation with a linguistic lecture explaining why a particular identifier is functioning as an epithet rather than a personal name. accurate? perhaps. readable? absolutely not. translation, after all, is intended to communicate a story—not to teach an entire course in comparative linguistics.
this is where fandom enters the equation. readers naturally fill in the missing pieces using the only framework they possess: their own. one fanfiction assigns an English role to an unfamiliar identifier. another writer adopts the same convention. a hundred readers encounter it repeatedly. eventually, what began as an unconscious interpretation slowly transforms into accepted fanon. the reinterpretation is no longer questioned because, through repetition, it begins to feel canonical. translation does not create these misunderstandings on its own. it merely provides the conditions under which they become possible. the actual reinterpretation occurs in the minds of readers, where unfamiliar linguistic systems are quietly reorganized into something that feels comfortably familiar.
಄ ⋆ CHAPTER 7. CASE STUDY
which leads to a minor footnote, and the inciting example on why i made this post. one of my favorite little linguistic quirks in JJK is that "Ryomen Sukuna" isn't really a given name in the way a lot of English-speaking fans read it.
the historical figure that inspired Jujutsu Kaisen's Sukuna is traditionally known as Ryōmen Sukuna. the term Ryōmen (両面) literally means "two-faced" or "two-sided," referring to the figure's unusual appearance. rather than functioning as an ordinary personal name, it is widely understood as a descriptive epithet attached to Sukuna.
as discussed in chapter 2, epithets perform a fundamentally different function from given names. they describe rather than identify. however, once romanized into the Latin alphabet, "Ryōmen Sukuna" visually resembles a conventional English first name–surname pairing. the epithet is therefore reassigned a familiar role: first name. this interpretation is further reinforced through repetition. once a sufficient number of fanworks address Sukuna as "Ryomen," subsequent writers encounter the convention repeatedly and naturally assume it reflects canon. over time, the reinterpretation becomes self-perpetuating, not because readers consciously reject the original naming system, but because the English framework has already become normalized within the community.
modern AUs present a somewhat different situation. since these settings intentionally remove characters from their historical and cultural contexts, writers are free to assign entirely new naming conventions if they wish. someone may choose to reinterpret "Ryomen" as a legal first name simply because it functions conveniently within the world of their story (but still, when you take into account kanji, and you should, it becomes messy). fanfiction is, after all, transformative by nature.
admittedly, none of this prevents me from visibly twitching every time Heian-era Uraume solemnly addresses Sukuna as "Ryomen" with the energy of someone calling Alexander the Great "Great." that, however, is a personal problem rather than a linguistic one. not everyone is a nitpicker. ultimately, the question is not whether fanfiction is "allowed" to call Sukuna "Ryomen." fanfiction has never depended upon strict historical or linguistic accuracy. rather, this example demonstrates how easily unfamiliar naming systems become reorganized according to the expectations of another language. what appears to be a single naming choice is, in reality, the product of translation, cognition, and community convention acting together.
಄ ⋆ CHAPTER 8: WHAT CAN YOU DO?
if this essay has accomplished anything, i hope it has not convinced you that your fanfiction is "wrong." rather, i hope it has convinced you that naming conventions are often far more culturally complex than they first appear.
the purpose of this essay has never been to argue that every writer should become a historian, a linguist, or a professional translator before opening Google Docs. fanfiction is transformative by design. writers are free to alter names, settings, relationships, and entire worlds if doing so serves the story they wish to tell.
the distinction lies in intentionality.
there is a meaningful difference between deliberately changing a naming convention because it better suits your story and unconsciously changing it because you assumed it worked like English. the former is a creative decision. the latter is simply a assumption. fortunately, assumptions are surprisingly easy to challenge.
when writing characters from another culture—particularly historical settings—it is often worth asking a few simple questions before assigning an unfamiliar identifier a familiar role. is this actually the person's given name? could this instead be a title, epithet, clan name, patronymic, courtesy name, or honorific? am I following a convention because the source material suggests it, or because other fanfiction does? if i removed my English expectations, would i still interpret this name the same way? the answer, of course, may still be "I'm going to write it this way anyway." and that is perfectly acceptable.
the goal is not perfect authenticity. absolute historical accuracy has never been the defining characteristic of fanfiction, nor should it be. creative writing thrives on reinterpretation. what matters is understanding what you are reinterpreting.
once you recognize that names are cultural systems rather than isolated words, small details begin to reveal themselves everywhere. family names stop looking like first names. patronymics stop looking like middle names. epithets stop looking like legal names. romanized words stop feeling automatically familiar simply because they share the same alphabet. most importantly, you become aware of your own assumptions. language is remarkably good at making itself invisible. we rarely notice the frameworks through which we interpret the world until we encounter one that functions differently. by then, our brains have often already attempted to reorganize the unfamiliar into something comfortably recognizable.
that tendency is not a personal failing. it is simply how humans make sense of the world. the challenge—and, perhaps, the fun—is learning to recognize when our own language is quietly filling in gaps that another culture never intended to leave. and if nothing else, perhaps the next time you encounter an unfamiliar name in a piece of media, you'll pause for just a moment before asking the question that inspired this entire essay: "is that actually their name... or have i simply given it an English job?"
oh and start using dictionaries.
಄ ⋆ CONCLUSION / TL;DR
this essay began because one (1) line in one (1) fanfiction annoyed me far more than any reasonable person should probably admit. human beings are exceptionally good at recognizing patterns, therefore English speaking consumers and writers interprets foreign naming systems through a framework they're already familiar with. the result is not usually malice, laziness, or ignorance—it is simply the remarkably human tendency to organize unfamiliar things into familiar categories.
this essay therefore is not an argument for linguistic perfection, nor is it a declaration that fanfiction must adhere to strict historical authenticity. rather, it is an invitation to become more conscious of the assumptions we bring into the media we consume and create. understanding that names have different jobs, that translation cannot preserve every cultural nuance, and that fandom often reinforces its own conventions allows us to appreciate foreign naming systems on their own terms. and if, after reading all of this, you still decide to call Heian-era Sukuna "Ryomen" anyway... well, i cannot stop you. i can, however, quietly sigh, open another tab, and begin drafting the sequel to this essay.
಄ ⋆ BIBLIOGRAPHY (IT"S JUST WIKIPEDIA)
English honorifics (Wikipedia)
given names (Wikipedia)
honorifics (Wikipedia)
Japanese honorifics (Wikipedia)
names (Wikipedia)
personal names (Wikipedia)
surnames (Wikipedia)
note ꩜ hi edit. it’s 1am i forgot to link my sources. i’ll add it to the bibliography in like a couple hours after i sleep. sorry everyone. oh and also, deleted the second paragraph of my background because apparently it got duplicated
Government: ok we are going to ban everything that romanticizes "taboo" stuff; smut about incest, abuse, rape, dark romance, everything like that, oh and also "icky" fanarts about minors.
anti's: YEEEEEY!
Government: ok now that you gave us the power to censor, we are going to push it a littleeee bit further and censor anything taboo, and media that discusses or even mentions dark topics with nuance, Lolita, 120 days of sodom, all gone! Everything has to be squeaky clean and sanitized!
anti's: yey!
Government: nice! now, we are going to erase from libraries all nazi books, like Mein Kampf, and any uncomfortable historical documentation about racism, homophobia, sexism etc, because that's problematic, right? we don't want our youth to read those and inform themsel- I MEAN, get influenced, right?
anti's: yes...?
Government: cool! now that we got rid of the "bad nasty stuff", you certainly won't mind if we also erase, you know... the other stuff we don't like and that we find uncomfortable, no matter the fact it doesn't hurt anybody, right? that also influences our young impressionable, sensitive kids, right?
anti's: what do you mean?
Government: oh you know, just, all the gay stuff. everything LGBTQ+, everything queer, everything not 100% vanilla that doesn't promote the traditional values, and the sole existence of blood on screen and kissing and the representation of marginalized groups-
anti's: WHAT? no!
Government: uh?? i thought YOU were the ones who wanted to "bring back Hays Code" and not see any sex or "problematic" stuff on screen!
Do you guys want THIS to happen? i don't think you do.
the bravest souls in fan spaces are the people who selfship with a character that already has a wildly popular ship in the fandom. you looked at a tidal wave of fan meta and fics all pairing your fav with another popular character and said okay. but what if i was the one kissing them instead? extremely powerful aura.
@ Hozier square up these bops are NOT carefree @jaguarthecat - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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