Hey everyone,
I just ran the PFS scenario City of Strangers Part I, and I don't own the City of Strangers supplement, so I relied on the Pathfinderwiki. There's an NPC in the Ankar-Te district whose name is either extremely unfortunate for him or else misentered into the wiki as a prank by a capricious wiki enterer. His name in the wiki is Hyu Zhuang the owner of a casino known as Thrown Bones. According to my Mandarin-speaking players, Hyu is pronounced the same as the word 'hue' and Zhuang is pronounced like the French letter j (like in the name Jacques) and then 'Wong'. So if this is his name, it's pronounced Huge Wang (and he owns a store called Thrown Bones just to rub it in a bit).
"Harsk" (the iconic Ranger's name) means "rancid" in Danish. You can't check every name against every language.
No, I don't mean that his name means "Huge Wang" in Mandarin. When simply reading his name aloud with standard Romanization (remember he's from Tian Xia), his name is pronounced "Huge Wang". It's like having the name Maya Rection or something like that. (And it's not like it took the Mandarin-speakers to notice the pronunciation. The moment I saw the name, I also thought it would be pronounced that way so I asked them to make sure I wasn't crazy)
EDIT: Though I take it from your post that this is the real name from the book?
I read it the same way you do (speak Mandarin, but not native) *but* it's said more like "...ong" than "...ang" and I think "wang" is generally the way folks refer to a certain male body part, not "wong". Am I wrong about that?
Still, it sounds fairly intentional.
M
Note: Sorry, my written pronunciation technique kinda sucks and I don't know IPA or anything. Anyway, I see "wang" and read it in Mandarin as "wong" (like "long") but I think non-speakers will tend to read it as "wang" (like "bang"). Then again I see "xing" in a school zone and I read it as "zing". :)
M
Oh man. That's hilarious. Props to Mr. Sutter.
Ok i study Mandarin chinese and i´ve been there for more than a year.
Hyu is more like fantasy word or maybe an older transcription and Zhuang is pronounced like "tschuang".
wang most often means king by the way.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Hyu Zhuang is indeed the name.
If you think that a character named "Huge Wang" is hilarious (in an Ong-Bak "Dirty Balls" sort of way), then it's pronounced that way. If not, then it's a more Anglicized "Hue Zuh-wong."
As for which was the author's intention... well, a little mystery makes everything better, doesn't it? :D
Hyu Zhuang is indeed the name.
If you think that a character named "Huge Wang" is hilarious (in an Ong-Bak "Dirty Balls" sort of way), then it's pronounced that way. If not, then it's a more Anglicized "Hue Zuh-wong."
As for which was the author's intention... well, a little mystery makes everything better, doesn't it? :D
Ha! Awesome. Our group decided to play it up, including having Zhuang keep his lucky dice in a spiked dice cup that he wore in front of his trousers. I need to get that Cit yof Strangers book!
Unrelatedly, High Priestess Shamalay Kasan is listed as a Cleric 7 on Pathfinderwiki, but the Child-Goddess page on the wiki indicates that "it is not known whether the Child-goddess is an actual deity, a hoax used to generate income for the cult, or something more innocuous". Given Razmir's clerical difficultie and the non-existence of godless clerics in Golarion, wouldn't Shamalay's class mean that the Cult of the Child Goddess had to be backed by an actual deity (even if it's not the one most other than Shamalay think they worship?). If this is just another one of those "James War" points like Mengkare's alignment [troll]He's totally Lawful Neutral![/troll], that's also great!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I can't encourage you to buy City of Strangers enough, it's awesomely the best product I've purchased from Paizo.
The Child goddess cult could be gettig their power from some minor deity of deception or some lingering godspark of the Peacock Spirit. Razmir gets no love cause he's personally too powerful for a deity to give him that much juice. History of campaigns show that a lvl20 Sorceror is a pain in the average malignat demi gods metaphysical arse.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Unrelatedly, High Priestess Shamalay Kasan is listed as a Cleric 7 on Pathfinderwiki, but the Child-Goddess page on the wiki indicates that "it is not known whether the Child-goddess is an actual deity, a hoax used to generate income for the cult, or something more innocuous". Given Razmir's clerical difficultie and the non-existence of godless clerics in Golarion, wouldn't Shamalay's class mean that the Cult of the Child Goddess had to be backed by an actual deity (even if it's not the one most other than Shamalay think they worship?). If this is just another one of those "James War" points like Mengkare's alignment [troll]He's totally Lawful Neutral![/troll], that's also great!
There won't be a James War on this one because, if I have my way, the truth about the Child-Goddess is going to stay unknown for a while. And as long as it's unknown, there can't be any conflict, can there? :)
The Child Goddess is definitely different than Razmiran, though. He's a full-on arcane fraud. The worshipers of the Child-Goddess have divine powers, it's just not clear to outsiders (and maybe even to most worshipers) who or what the Child-Goddess represents. (This was also written before the APG, otherwise the oracle class might have been very useful in describing the cult.) But for now all I'll say is: the cultists are getting power from someone or something. How you want to spin that mystery at your table is up to you!
(And thanks, Zagnabbit!)