Let’s talk Disco. What's in a name?
(And I'm going in. I'm talking linked sources and bullet points and enlarged text for visual ease.)
Specifically, we're talking about the etymology, linguistics, and semiotics behind the names of our two favourite haunted detectives:
Harrier Du Bois and Kim Kitsuragi !
I'm going into first and last names. This is going to be a long one, so bear with me.
This is a loaded as fuck name.
Harry is a man, fallible, mortal. Harrier is a role he is fated to step into. A consequence.
The verb harry (harried, harrying) comes from the middle english "harien", "to plunder, ravage, torment, pursue, drag." That in turn comes from old french, "harier:" "to ravage, pillage".
It also refers to a breed of hunting dog (a scent hound. Bred for pursuit.) that is also noted to be friendly, outgoing, and people oriented.
It further refers to a type of low-flying hawk, the Harrier. It hunts while flying low to the earth in search of small prey. "They are distinctive with long wings, a long narrow tail, the slow and low flight over grasslands and skull peculiarities."
Sound familiar ?? Harry with his long arms, long skinny legs, hovering low and slow over crimes scenes talking about how he's the "law" with his polio jaw? No reaching required... the shape of him is already in the wingspan. Even the flared-pants make sense here. Those are his tail feathers.
So with that in mind, Harrier as:
a verb; someone who harasses, raids, or troubles. That’s Harry to a fucking T. A man who can’t let things lie, who stirs up buried crimes, historical rot, and his own trauma... A man who harrows the land AND himself. The precursor of the hawk. The neglected cockatoo. The fuck-up-atoo.
a dog; loyal but reckless. A creature that pursues, sometimes beyond sense or self-preservation. There's many references in canon of Harry being likened to a dog.
a bird of prey; solitary, watchful, predatory in instinct, but not cruel. Just hungry. And low-flying too-- earthbound despite his name’s aerial aspiration.
YOU - “Wait, what kind of name is 'Harrier'?”
KIM KITSURAGI - “It's a wartime name. Revolutionary. The kind mothers give their sons during troubled times. Like 'Undying' or 'Boxer' or 'Ironhide'.”
ENDURANCE - It's meant to keep you safe.
So in that sense, Harry is not a man. Not to the world. Not to himself. He’s a harrier. A tool for the pursuit of truth, justice, order, or whatever corpse they’re digging up today, but he doesn’t just chase criminals. He harasses the world for meaning.
A prey animal pretending to be a predator
It’s recursive; the harrier is also the harried. The hound becomes the hunted. You pursue truth so hard you collapse into your own life, and no one calls him Harrier unless it's serious. Harry leaves room to be unpretentious, childish even. Harrier is militarized. It is a role.
This name, Harrier, is his job, his burden, his curse. It was chosen for protection, yet assigned for destruction.
I've seen a lot of theorizing how it's so perfect for Harry as a lot of folks think the direct translation is "Harry of the Drink", which inspired me to write this post. "Of the drink" is actually both etymologically and linguistically incorrect, but the poetry is in the mishap. That's what makes it such a massively fucking potent brew.
Bois as in "drink" is a verb from the full word "boire" and in French, they would never use "du" (the conjugation of "de le") in front of a verb. With that in mind, the noun "Bois" is in reference to "forest" or "woods." In old french historically, people who lived near the woods would have this surname.
Du = contraction of de le = “of the”
Bois = noun, masculine plural of “le bois”
Meaning: wood, woods, or forest
“Du Bois” = “of the woods”, or less literally, “from the forest.”
The verb form: you drink / I drink (tu bois, je bois)
Hails from the forest (his vast, bountiful, mysterious soul)
Is lost in the forest (falling through the cracks of society, the vastness breaks him open)
Drinks the forest (the Pale. The rot. His passion. Himself.)
Becomes the drink (what was supposed to save him becomes his crutch, vice, and eventual murderer)
His surname sounds like the thing he escaped into. The woods and the bottle. But he is the woods. He is the drink. His deep, forest-hazy soul. He is the haunted house where they meet.
Harry is his name. Harrier is his role.
Kim is more tricky than cross referencing the french dictionary. This is all mostly my own speculation guided by research, game knowledge, and what I understand about him as a character.
Kim to me is both the mask, and the mirror, if that makes sense. He’s both what you see, and what you see in yourself, if you’re lucky.
Let's talk etymology and use of the name "Kim"
It's common in Korea (김), Vietnam, and China as a surname.
Also used as a given name in Thai (คิม - Khim)
In the West, it’s also more often a given name (like Kimberly)
I believe the ambiguity is the point. He nor the game ever specifies his ethnic background, really, just that he’s quarter Seolite, and that others read him as foreign in ways that are often hostile or dismissive. Mostly dismissive; think Evrart, Lena, Joyce etc. How many people defaulted to speaking with only Harry and saw Kim as a background token.
Now “Kim” is an extremely adaptable name. It passes, in a way Harry never could. It's also short and blunt. You can’t mispronounce “Kim.” His first name is functional. It doesn't leave room to read him at a passing glance. He could change it, but...
KIM KITSURAGI - "Even if I were to change my name now, upon hearing any syllable that sounds like *kim* in the street, I'd turn to see who was calling me."
His last name, "Kitsuragi," is not a real Japanese surname although it sounds like it is, and I know it's confirmed as homage to a character from Evangelion (I haven't watched it, but from what I know, the Kitsuragi woman takes Shinji under her wing in a way that she feels a bit pitiful for him. Shinji is pitiful. So is Harry. But they both contain multitudes.).
So if we talk about what parts make up the name "Kitsuragi," it starts to get extremely interesting and telling of his character.
It sounds like Kisaragi (如月), OR a kitsune + kisaragi fusion.
Kim is extremely fox-coded. Even just consider his bright orange bomber jacket. That's the first tell... red foxes have black boots too! Let's get into it.
In Japanese folklore, a fox spirit. Intelligent, shape-shifting, often tricksters or protectors.
Some stories portray kitsune as loyal companions and others, as illusions.
This makes sense to me as he is a fox in the henhouse of Revachol -- clever, composed, always watching (despite visual impairment -- but that's another conversation) and foxes aren't domestic animals, like dogs. They're forever relegated to the outside. That's his curse.
The second month of the old Chinese lunar calendar. February. The month before the game takes place. A cold, inward time.
Literal meanings attributed to the word include “wearing more clothes” ("kinusuragi," due to the cold), or “renewed garments," or "plants awakening". A season of concealed change.
Kitsu-ragi = A name that sounds real, but isn’t. It’s a crafted surname but loaded with motifs: coldness, reinvention, misdirection, foxlike sharpness, seasonal stillness, and the coming of spring.
I feel it may also relate to the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where they repair pottery with a visible golden lacquer, showing off the damage. Because something damaged can be repaired into something more beautiful than before.
Because of his past, it might not even be his birth name. He lost his parent's at the age of two. He may not have had any papers.
Kitsuragi could be a racialized paper name from the orphanage, a precinct name, or (more likely) a name he gave himself to navigate a system that wouldn’t pronounce or respect the one he was born with. “Kitsuragi” is extremely effective camouflage in a city that flattens difference into decorum or suspicion.
It’s a uniform, and it fits too well-- because he probably tailored it himself. We know Kim can tailor. He tells us that if you choose to bully him.
KIM KITSURAGI - "Yes. And this 'mega-binoclard'/'washed-up TipTop racer' knows how to sew a lapel and center a back vent." The lieutenant raises one eyebrow at you.
COMPOSURE - That's why his clothes fit so well...
The name is bespoke. His name also holds syllabic symmetry. Kim Kitsuragi. Kim Kitsuragi. Say it out loud with me:
Kim Kitsuragi is rhythmic: one blunt syllable, then four that flow.
Kim, his blunted identity = a single edged blade.
Kitsuragi, his curated name = a sheathe.
The alliteration also creates an identity that is branded. It's easy to remember but impossible to mistake. It feels like a cop’s name in a procedural: professional, foreign, clean. But just beneath that? It’s too clean. Too curated. Almost like a man who trimmed down every word he didn’t need until only the useful ones remained.
Sounds like our guy, doesn't it?
“Kim Kitsuragi” is a name you say without knowing how much you’re actually misreading it. That’s how racism works in Disco Elysium-- not through overt slurs (though those come too! Fuck you Gary!), but through the way names become containers for assumption.
Kim’s name, in full, carries:
Effortless erasure (No one asks. He doesn’t offer. He's fine with that.)
But he holds power in that too. In a place like Revachol, to choose your name is to take control of your story (think Tommy le Homme, Cindy the Skull, The Cuno). It's a mechanism of Elysium. His name to me doesn't read as history, but strategy, and unlike Harry, who is was constantly finding himself, found too much, and is starting all over... Kim knows who he is. He just doesn't tell you, because the world has shown him that he is not safe as himself.
Now the contrast is also interesting when I line it up like this--we LOVE Kim/Harry because they're both complete opposites but also two sides of the same coin. They go together like all good combo's do. Let's compare their names as a last little treat.
Unruly, haunted, almost lyrical.
Controlled, flowing, sharp.
Just enough name to live.
Kim's initials are an architecture of his own building. Harry's initials are his written-in spiral.
They don’t just complement each other. They make it possible for each other to finally be legible.
"I DON'T WANT TO BE THIS KIND OF ANIMAL ANYMORE."
They make me fucking crazy. I could even get into how both their names are 5 syllables, and how the alliteration of K.K implies self awareness, duplication (living only a version of yourself) a loop? , and also a self-inflicted barrier. Maybe tomorrow. This took me all day to research and write.
Thank you for coming to my Ted-Talk. Please enjoy my ramblings. I love you Kim and Harry. I love you Disco Elysium world building. Can look under a rock and find lore there. It's actually nuts.
