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Bill: National Name Change
Details
Submitted by[?]: 立憲維新党 (Rikken Ishin-tō)
Status[?]: passed
Votes: This bill is a resolution. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: January 4474
Description[?]:
| Proposal to change the name of Sekowo from: セコオの天国帝国 (Sekouo no Tengoku Teikoku) to 生古塢天帝国 (Sekouo Ten-Teikoku) |
Proposals
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 03:08:49, October 07, 2018 CET | From | 帝国公明党 (Teikoku Kōmeitō) | To | Debating the National Name Change |
| Message | OOC: Three things; 1. I oppose the utilization of an English language name in our official title. 2. The country name in English as well as Romanized spellings is Sekouo, not Sekowo, I spent alot of time and effort getting that changed. 3. The actual name of the country is the 'Celestial Empire of Sekouo', not Divine (or heavenly for that matter), the Japanese name uses the word it does since Japanese doesn't have a specific/discreet word that means/translates to the English word Celestial. |
| Date | 07:24:56, October 07, 2018 CET | From | 立憲維新党 (Rikken Ishin-tō) | To | Debating the National Name Change |
| Message | I understand points 2 and 3, updated. As for point 1, how will those not fluent in the national language be able to understand the name? |
| Date | 08:58:38, October 07, 2018 CET | From | 帝国公明党 (Teikoku Kōmeitō) | To | Debating the National Name Change |
| Message | Honestly I don't think it much matters if they do or not, everyone just uses short names when talking about the various countries anyways, and we're not the only case of doing this in game. |
| Date | 00:31:25, October 08, 2018 CET | From | 立憲維新党 (Rikken Ishin-tō) | To | Debating the National Name Change |
| Message | In that case, would prefer it be changed to: 生古塢天帝国 (Sekouo Ten-Teikoku)? |
| Date | 02:24:46, October 08, 2018 CET | From | 帝国公明党 (Teikoku Kōmeitō) | To | Debating the National Name Change |
| Message | I honestly don't see a need to change it at all really. |
| Date | 03:07:38, October 08, 2018 CET | From | 立憲維新党 (Rikken Ishin-tō) | To | Debating the National Name Change |
| Message | OOC: At its current state, it's incorrect. Local names are not referred to in katakana, and the の is grammatically incorrect. 天国帝国 would be literally translated to "Heaven Empire" (notice, not HeavenLY Empire). |
| Date | 10:04:42, October 08, 2018 CET | From | 帝国公明党 (Teikoku Kōmeitō) | To | Debating the National Name Change |
| Message | Ah I see where you're coming from, the thing is though that the language Sekouo uses is not actually strict Japanese, it has some grammatical differences due to history. To explain; so originally Sekouo was not actually a two-point Nation rather it was a multicultural Nation where there were four groups they were all roughly the same size as well as some smaller minority groups those groups were the Japonic peoples Nordic peoples Franco Norman peoples and the Greco-Roman peoples, while the two primary minority groups were based on different American Indian groups, one being based on the Maya and the other being based on a hybrid of the Pacific Northwest indigenous peoples and the Ainu; now this situation progressed for many centuries in game and canonically was supposed to be how it was for several centuries before the game start, as a result the language spoken in Sekouo was influenced by the other languages and different grammar systems to the point that it's more based on Japanese rather than being true Japanese. This is actually something that overtime I took in consideration as IRL my knowledge of Japanese grammar and how to put together sentences grew I actually made sure as I did stuff in the game that I tried to stay true to the idea of a unique language, this is also incidentally why both Western and Eastern naming conventions are used and why the IC Imperial Family uses not only the Western naming but utilizes a somewhat unique system where when talking about a side branch member they have a name like Akeno Ishida no Raiden, where the Japanese 'no' (の) has in Sekouan taken on the English meaning for 'of'; additionally the name Sekouo would use Katakana since it's ultimately a non-Japanese name in game history so it was a foreign name adopted by the Japonic people's, hence it being written in Katakana rather than Kanji. This linguistic difference has been something I've preserved even after Sekouo became Japonic majority (I don't remember the exacts of how it happened, but I've also always held that around 30% of the population should realistically be made up of those other groups) and something I continue to use. Ultimately I suppose it is sort of my own fault for never having written this down more clearly in some sort of cultural explanation bill but shō ga nai. |
| Date | 01:51:48, October 09, 2018 CET | From | 立憲維新党 (Rikken Ishin-tō) | To | Debating the National Name Change |
| Message | OOC: Okay, this makes more sense, I thought it was pure mistranslation. In this case, I'll retort based on the background you've painted for me so we can come up with some form of compromise. Since you've said that Japanese is the majority group here (as well as it being my speciality), I'll mainly be using examples from its pre-modern history where culture diffusion did happen. First, regarding the の. What you said about its use in pre-modern times is correct, but those are for names (such as Minamoto no Yoritomo). If we were to name our politicians in this matter, that makes sense. Nation-wise, that format wasn't used as a substitute in the same way. Even during eras in history like the Kamakura period, "nations" (or its closest equivalent) weren't referred to with の separating the name and government type (such as Ming China being referred to as 大明帝国, 明朝, and 大明, but never one with の in its name). The closest example is "東国の源氏、西国の平氏", which refers to "Minamoto of the East, Taira of the West". However if you find any specific examples stating otherwise I'd be interested. The other point you made was that Sekouo isn't a native term and should therefore be in katakana. For a more modern era, that's true, but you also stated Sekouo as a name came into the culture at a relatively early age. Words adopted in pre-modern times were generally treated as native words, effectively "Japanifying" them. There are many cases were Portuguese words that arrived in the initial days of contact were adopted into hiragana or kanji words, like tempura (天麩羅, originally tempero), kompeito (金米糖, originally confeito), and karuta (かるた, originally cartas). Words referring to foreign countries were also Japanified into native characters, such as America (亜米利加), France (仏蘭西), or Europe (欧羅巴). Another example, more similar to what you were talking about, is most of Hokkaido. The region, being originally primarily Ainu, has many Ainu words that were Japanified. Cities like Sapporo aren't actually Japanese but Ainu (sat poro pet), but they were given characters (札幌) to match the rest of the language. I know this response is long, but my point is this: my attempt to completely make it Japanese wouldn't reflect the culture accurately and the current state of the name raises many linguistic red flags, even when considering the culture. I hope we could come to a good balance between language and culture. |
| Date | 11:53:08, October 09, 2018 CET | From | 帝国公明党 (Teikoku Kōmeitō) | To | Debating the National Name Change |
| Message | OOC: In terms of の I was meaning in game history, that is that the Sekouan language was significantly influenced by Western languages to the point that it now is used in Sekouan the same way 'of' is used in English and 'von' in German (the latter is in game important because the country north of us has always been a bicultural country, with half being Japonic and half German). As to the name, while I know and understand that foreign word adoptions can and have been fully Japanized, Sekouo I feel is to recent, that is it was well into the information age (admittedly over a thousand game years ago) that it was adopted; originally Sekowo (with the W) was the general name with different cultures having different names, it was not until after the Japonic majority happened that the Japanized name was adopted; basically I'm not like fiercely supportive of the continued use of the Katakana version it's more I'm not sure it would realistically have been fully Japanized, especially in and Information Society where standardization can be so widespread and enforced. With that all said I would like to say that I do appreciate you efforts, in the time I've been playing (2007-2012, 2013-2014 and currently since this last August) we've never really had anyone who spoke Japanese, so it's very helpful. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | |||
| yes | Total Seats: 278 | |||
| no | Total Seats: 34 | |||
| abstain | Total Seats: 0 |
| Random fact: Particracy does not allow real-life brand names (eg. Coca Cola, McDonalds, Microsoft). However, in the case of military equipment brand names it is permitted to use simple number-letter combinations (eg. T-90 and F-22) borrowed from real life, and also simple generic names, like those of animals (eg. Leopard and Jaguar). |
| Random quote: "Capitalism is what people do if you leave them alone" - Kenneth Minogue |