Difference between revisions of "Talk:Scarlet Flower"
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Cool! I'll add "Possibly Sháo-Lung" to the Breed Name part. | Cool! I'll add "Possibly Sháo-Lung" to the Breed Name part. | ||
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| + | == or then again... == | ||
| + | Belatedly, I looked up the literal meaning of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua_Mulan#Name Hua Mulan], the name of the girl in the original (dragonless) legend. Her family name means "flower" and her personal name means "tree-orchid", referring to a type of magnolia with reddish flowers.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulan_magnolia] | ||
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| + | If the relatively generic "flower/tree" elements are stripped out of her name, that leaves 蘭: ''lán'', "orchid". This is an appealing option wrt indirect literary allusion, but I don't know whether there's an actual species of "scarlet" orchid that's native to China. (Epidendrum tampense, whose common name is "scarlet orchid", seems to be native to Florida :b ) --[[User:Wombat1138|Wombat1138]] 21:53, 14 August 2010 (PDT) | ||
Latest revision as of 04:53, 15 August 2010
芍?[edit]
This is pure speculation, but the "original Chinese name" for this breed might be 芍, which is a single-word term for "peony". Peonies are a traditional symbol of China. However, a.) there are many different Chinese terms that mean "peony"; b.) not all peonies are red; c.) there are many other types of red flowers in China; and d.) the three preceding points all assume that "Scarlet Flower" is a non-literal translation. The main reason why I've pulled this one out of a hat is because unlike, say, 牡丹 (another name for peonies), it is a single word, and thus suitable for inserting into the middle of a three-part dragon name.
As for the transliteration(s)... oy. According to the Wiktionary entry linked above, there are (at least) eight different possibilities, depending on whether you go with anachronistic modern Pinyin (which NN seems to slightly prefer, though she removes the tonal diacritics) or the somewhat more period-authetic Wade-Giles (which she tends to streamline even further). I don't know enough about Mandarin to have any idea why so many different pronunciations are listed-- and they *are* all listed as Mandarin, so it's not a regional dialect issue.
Pinyin Wade-Giles streamlined WG dì ti4 ti què ch'üeh4 chueh sháo shao2 shao shuò shuo4 shuo xiào hsiao4 hsiao
-- Wombat1138 16:47, 14 August 2010 (PDT)
- Followup-- based on a quick Google check of usage examples, it looks like sháo is the preferred current pronunciation. -- Wombat1138 21:25, 14 August 2010 (PDT)
Cool! I'll add "Possibly Sháo-Lung" to the Breed Name part.
or then again...[edit]
Belatedly, I looked up the literal meaning of Hua Mulan, the name of the girl in the original (dragonless) legend. Her family name means "flower" and her personal name means "tree-orchid", referring to a type of magnolia with reddish flowers.[1]
If the relatively generic "flower/tree" elements are stripped out of her name, that leaves 蘭: lán, "orchid". This is an appealing option wrt indirect literary allusion, but I don't know whether there's an actual species of "scarlet" orchid that's native to China. (Epidendrum tampense, whose common name is "scarlet orchid", seems to be native to Florida :b ) --Wombat1138 21:53, 14 August 2010 (PDT)
