Civ IV Names
Mar. 6th, 2007 11:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowIf I have any quarrel with the makers of Civ IV, it's probably over some of their choices of names. Let pass the practice of naming barbarian cities after their tribes. (I generally rename those cities when I capture them.) Set aside some of their more questionable choices of Leaders. (Saladin was not an Arab, for instance; surely one of the Abbasid caliphs could have been used instead. I suppose none of them were quite as well known, but then why choose Huayna Capac as the Inca Leader, instead of Huascar or Atahuallpa? Both of the latter are rather pathetic figures, but they're surely better known than Huayna Capac.) No, I'm talking about the actual names.
1. Some of the names are simply Westernized, and to some degree inaccurate, representations: "Montezuma" instead of "Moctezuma", "Saladin" in place of "Salah ad-Din". I can live with that. (There seems to be some dispute over Montezuma/Moctezuma's real name, anyway.)
2. Generally speaking, they give first names for rulers of dynastic states and last names for republics. Thus "Elizabeth" and "Cyrus", but "Roosevelt" and "Gandhi". In some cases they go with more full names: "Genghis Khan", "Julius Caesar". But for some reason, they give the name "Tokugawa" to the Japanese Leader. Of course, that was a family name; there were lots of Tokugawas. Surely they mean Tokugawa Ieyasu, but the reference works I can find generally refer to him as "Ieyasu" (or some variant). (For that matter, how often does one refer to Ieyasu's predecessor as "Toyotomi", as opposed to "Hideyoshi"?)
3. This is the big one. One of the two Chinese Leaders is given as "Qin Shi Huang", and that is flat wrong. "Qin" was the name of his dynasty; his regnal name was "Shi Huangdi". Either that, or the full "Qin Shi Huangdi" would be reasonable; the choice they actually made is comparable to speaking of "Mao Ze" or "Zhou En". That one just bugs me.
1. Some of the names are simply Westernized, and to some degree inaccurate, representations: "Montezuma" instead of "Moctezuma", "Saladin" in place of "Salah ad-Din". I can live with that. (There seems to be some dispute over Montezuma/Moctezuma's real name, anyway.)
2. Generally speaking, they give first names for rulers of dynastic states and last names for republics. Thus "Elizabeth" and "Cyrus", but "Roosevelt" and "Gandhi". In some cases they go with more full names: "Genghis Khan", "Julius Caesar". But for some reason, they give the name "Tokugawa" to the Japanese Leader. Of course, that was a family name; there were lots of Tokugawas. Surely they mean Tokugawa Ieyasu, but the reference works I can find generally refer to him as "Ieyasu" (or some variant). (For that matter, how often does one refer to Ieyasu's predecessor as "Toyotomi", as opposed to "Hideyoshi"?)
3. This is the big one. One of the two Chinese Leaders is given as "Qin Shi Huang", and that is flat wrong. "Qin" was the name of his dynasty; his regnal name was "Shi Huangdi". Either that, or the full "Qin Shi Huangdi" would be reasonable; the choice they actually made is comparable to speaking of "Mao Ze" or "Zhou En". That one just bugs me.
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Date: 2007-03-06 05:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-06 11:48 pm (UTC)