Pitching in on the O!Ciel name theories a billion years late
(Posted: 26/12/2024, Edited: 27/12/2024)
Greetings, Kuroshitsuji fandom - longtime lurker and fan here.
One of the things I love the most about this fandom is the amount of theories and how rewarding theorising has been (with regards to 2CT specifically). I've been observing people doing it for years on the sidelines, and as I've been getting back into the fandom again over the holidays, I thought I might finally put together a post about my own headcanon about O!Ciel's name. A bit late to the party, I know, but it's dear to my heart and I thought people might find it interesting.
I've had this headcanon for a few years now that's been inspired by some of the existing theories/hunches that fits best with the manga theming around the twins from what I've seen so far. I haven't this HC anywhere else, though please let me know if you have.
Without further ado - my vote for O!Ciel's name is...
...Mond Phantomhive.
Let me explain.
I agree with many people who've said that Sebastian saying in chapter 11 he 'swore to/made a vow by the moon' is significant. While in context it makes sense as a return Romeo and Juliet reference on the one Grelle makes (see this post here), Sebastian is specifically talking about the day he became 'Sebastian' and concluded the contract, i.e. swore his service to O!Ciel. There are any number of ways he could have found out O!Ciel's real name by that point, whether through the magic of the contract, manor records, or simply having interacted with people within the Phantomhive estate who remembered both twins.
In German, Mond means 'moon'. However, it is also only one letter off from monde, which is French for 'world'. This gives us two different connections to the sky (ciel) with thematic meaning. I will touch on both, though the moon one is more important - if I'm correct, though, then there's some very clever thematic wordplay here across two languages, so it makes sense to explore it!
The moon that shines in it only when it is 'night' - i.e. the darkness or death of the sky. While his brother's death was a tragedy within a tragedy, it also meant that O!Ciel could finally 'shine' after growing up feeling that he was just a spare who would never inherit the estate, or be worthy of doing so (flashbacks from chapters 130-140, e.g. the below from 132).
Ciel is another way to say the heavens in French as well - that which we look to in the sky, and also an important fixed contrast to Earth, or le monde (heavens and earth). This contrast can have many meanings, but in our case it can relate to the other-wordly (i.e. the dead/supernatural R!Ciel) and the wordly (O!Ciel, who is still alive and embodying the Phantomhive legacy). People are right to point out the connection with star symbolism - it's all part of the same astronomy-based thematic group, and O!Ciel's name being related to both the Moon and the Earth fills in more elements.
(As a bonus, both Mond and monde are masculine nouns in German and French respectively, just like how ciel is in French, so I think that they would've been a better pick for a boy's name than, say, lune, which is a feminine noun in French. My vote is on Mond because of the moon connection, though I wouldn't be disappointed with Monde. Astre does not appeal to me personally, although - point in favour - it is also masculine.)
Another interesting connection comes from chapter 149. After we see a conversation between Othello and Grelle about the blood types, with the twins tied in both in Othello's explanation and the panel art, the transition of Othello sending a pigeon messenger takes us to R!Ciel looking at a bird flying against the moon. Seeing this, he reaches towards it.
R!Ciel collapses, and tells Undertaker that he wants to go to his brother's side, and then has a vision of O!Ciel standing at the windowsill when they were little. In other words, we're given a direct parallel between reaching for the moon and reaching for O!Ciel, and then a juxtaposition of O!Ciel and the window. In a way, it also functions as a metaphor of him having escaped to the outside (where the moon that R!Ciel can't reach is) and no longer being constrained to the inside of the manor like he was as a kid - if I'm correct about the name, that is.
(Also, in using the symbolism of one twin as death and one as life in the previous panels during Othello and Grelle's conversation, we again have the supernatural/earthly contrast that heavens/earth gives us.)
Well, there you have it. I like this headcanon because a) it gives us a masculine name, b) it gives us extra wordplay across both French and German, c) it incorporates all the relevant symbolism. Also, I like how it sounds, for what preference counts.
Let me know what you think of this/if I've missed anything big.
Bonus:
We know from Vincent (chapter 132) that neither twin has a traditional English name/one common on the country's territory (which is how Pastor Rathbourne phrases it). I've seen at least one person speculate (though I can't find that post now) that giving the other Phantomhive twin a German name to cement the family's strong connection to that part of the world (via Diedrich) would make sense. I know this is isn't really based on evidence, but personally I find that a compelling extra reason as well. Rachel was the one to pick the names, and while I don't think Vincent would have been so overt in showing affection to Diedrich by giving his son a German name, I think she might've.
Bonus Bonus:
Pastor Rathbourne may have provided us with another clue, actually. The following is half-sourced and half from my own general knowledge and love for classics.
Clergymen in the Victorian era (as was the case for a long-time before that) were normally highly educated people, and certainly if they were leading parishes of their own (as Rathbourne was). Virtually all of them would've received their education at Oxford or Cambridge, which may have included some kind of foreign language (most likely: French, which was still the diplomatic language of the period) and definitely included Latin (because: ecclesiastical duty) and also Hebrew/Greek.
It was one of the easy, almost default choices for sons of nobility who wouldn't inherit titles because of the good status and education attached (which all of them would've been receiving anyway). This is why it's one of the first things R!Ciel thinks his brother might do in Chapter 132 (and not just because they happened to be at the church when they were having this conversation).
Now, this is where we enter slightly more into speculation, but bear with me. Any clergyman worth his salt would be able to, at the very least, recognise French vocabulary by virtue of it being a Romance language as well (because they all learned Latin), and be able to differentiate it from vocabulary from a non-Latin language even if they didn't know what it was.
Ciel is a very common word in French, an inheritance from Latin, so the chances Pastor Rathbourne was aware it was derived from French are extremely high. He would've probably been able to recognise any other French (or even Romance language) names as well. Yet, when he's talking about both of the twins' names, he says that they have unusual names for the region of England, not that they have French names. If both of them are French, why use a weaker highest common denominator (foreign names, which includes names derived from other languages), when the most simple and obvious alternative is to say that both names were/seemed to be French? The obvious reason is because the twins don't both have French names, meaning that O!Ciel's name is not French and can only be grouped with his brother's as part of a broader category of non-traditional English names.
A counterargument here would be that Yana was simply trying to hide that O!Ciel's name was also French, but then why engineer this conversation in this way in the first place? It serves no other purpose in this scene than to describe what the twins' names are like (and to set up something ominous with Vincent's reply about a 'new age').
Also, I don't know what the original Japanese dialogue is, but it would seem from the translation that the emphasis is on the foreignness/unusualness of the names relative to England. This leads me to think it's more likely they're both derived from foreign languages, rather than one of them being French and the other one being e.g. a very weird Germanic/Old English name that simply isn't in use anymore.
Either way, though - if I'm right and the subtle implication here is that the twins don't both have French names, then that doesn't just mean that O!Ciel's name is maybe not French, but that it definitely isn't.
(This also discounts the possibility of Monde as a potential name spelling, though not the thematic implication/wordplay).
