Aerith And Bob / Anime & Manga

Aerith and Bob in Anime & Manga.

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• 7 Seeds has this in minor characters, not the five teams. During the Ryugu Shelter arc, with the shelter located around Kansai, we have regular, Japanese names like Takashi, Sadao, Tokidoki next to Maria and Mark, his dead brother Mike and the puppet Pete.
• The subbed TBS version of Aggretsuko had a mix of non-standard Japanese names (Retsuko, Yokosawa (actually the SURNAME of her voice actress), Western-sounding names done to Woolseyize the original's A Lizard Named "Liz" names (Eaglette, Hippatricia, Armadonna, etc.), normal (even if some are uncommon) Western names (Doug, Giselle, Zelda, Lucille, Heinrich, Carrie, etc.), and alliterative names (Ape Admin, Hog Honcho, Boss Buffalo).
• The Martian characters names in Aldnoah.Zero really stand out compared to Earth humans. Asseylum, Cruhteo, Saazbaum, Vlad....
• Attack on Titan:
  • Justified as the majority of names are ethnically Germanic, such as Armin and Reiner, except for Mikasa, who is possibly the last Asian left on Earth.
  • The series mostly uses a strange mixture of European names that are both common and rare. This is due to the fact that most of the people within the walls are of the same race, with the exception of Mikasa and the Ackermans (which includes Levi). Non-Germanic names are used outside the walls, such as in the case of Kiyomi, Yelena and Onyankopon. For example, you have Jean, which is a very common French name, as well as Ymir, the name of an ancient Scandinavian deity and, in-universe, Ymir is the name of the person who originally held the powers of the titans.
• Beastars has a pretty bad case of this: Characters with common Western names like Jack, Louis (albeit pronounced like "Louie")) and Bill coexist in the same city as characters with Japanese names like Haru and Aoba, and then you get the really weird names: The protagonist, in what might be the most awkward Shout-Out ever, is named Legosi, and there are characters with names like Yafya, Free, and MELON.
• The Godhand of Berserk is Femto, Void, Slan, Ubik and ... Conrad. The Godhand names apart from Femto, are borrowed from various books. The last being from Roger Zelazny's "...And Call Me Conrad".
• Black Butler utilizes this to emphasize certain characters. Exotic names such as Ciel Phantomhive and Grell Sutcliffe exist along common ones such as Charles Grey and William Spears.
• Bleach:
  • Ganju's gang's boars are named Bonny, Connie, Tony, Annie, Sunny, Honey, Manny, Nanny ... and Kanbei. Ichigo points it out but no one else seems to notice. (Episode 94)
  • The Arrancar tend to have faux-Spanish sounding names, with most of them being named after real life designers and architects (with some twists, though). As a result, some Arrancar have common names (Hispanic or not) such as Charlotte, Luppi, Franceska, and Baraggan, while others are called Ulquiorra, Nnoitra, Rudbornn, and Yylfordt.
  • The Wandenreich's names in general seem like an attempt to reflect several different nationalities. Some of the names are pretty common, such as Robert, Giselle, Candice, Jerome, and Berenice. On the other hand, we also have Nianzol, Quilge, Liltotto, and NaNaNa. Justified for some cases, such as BG9, which is a robot, and Yhwach, a reference to the Tetragrammaton (YHWH).
• Bungou Stray Dogs features this to a degree due to the mixing of cultures and the fact that most characters are named after authors, some of whom used pen names. Ordinary Japanese names like "Nakajima Atsushi" meet somewhat unusual Japanese names like "Yumeno Kyuusaku" (usually called Q), plus fairly ordinary-sounding western names like "John Steinbeck" and unusual western names like "Howard Phillips Lovecraft", and the very Russian Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
• Carole & Tuesday, a show about two people named Carole and Tuesday. Tuesday is the only named character so far with such an unusual name, but that only makes her stick out all the more. Her brother, for example, is the much more normal-sounding Spencer.
• In Claymore, most of the female characters have rather common western names (Clare, Teresa, Jean, etc.) while the men have more bizarre names, including Raki and his older brother Zaki (though Raki is just a really bad Japanese pronunciation of the name "Lucky"). The Men in Black who give assignments to the warriors are named after art museums: Rado (Prado, in Madrid), Orsay, Louvre, Ermita (Hermitage).
• In Code Geass, characters with names like Jeremiah and Shirley play alongside characters with names like Lelouch and Villetta. Counts doubly so for Schneizel, which is not only not a common name but manages to sound like a German foodstuff. If the name sounds really weird, there's a strong chance the character is a child of Emperor Charles (Said children include Lelouch and Schneziel, alongside Carine, Guinevere, Euphemia and Odysseus to name but a few). That said, Schneizel might be the rather common German name "Schneider" mistranslated through Japanese Ranguage, while Carine, Guinevere, Euphemia and Odysseus are all real-life names, just not commonly used. Lelouch and Nunnally, on the other hand, are two LAST names (French and Irish respectively) used as first names, while Suzaku is the name of a mythical creature and is never used as an actual name in Japan.
• Dazzle: On the one hand, we have Alzeid, Rahzel, and Baroqueheat (among others). On the other, we have Vincent, Addy, and Taylor. (Note that all the "Bob"-type names belong to minor characters.)
• Death Note:
  • In the Yagami family alone, you have Soichiro, Sayu, Sachiko ... and Light. Even a more traditional pronunciation of his name (Raito) doesn't fit with the theme of the rest of the family.
  • All non-Japanese characters have utterly bizarre names, perhaps best exemplified by the Wammy Boys - L Lawliet, Mihael Keehl (which is pronounced like "Michael" in German), Mail Jeevas ... though Nate River actually sounds like it could be a normal name. The author said they did this deliberately, so as to not accidentally offend any real-life people by having their name written in a killer notebook.
  • The prequel novel Another Note has characters with names like Naomi and Raye, and then adds in some truly bizarre names like Backyard Bottomslash and Bluesharp Babysplit.
• D.Gray-Man uses some fairly common names, such as Allen and Miranda. Then you get names like Lenalee, Daisya, Tyki, Jasdero, Devit, Skinn ... the list goes on and on.
• The Digimon dubs have this in every incarnation, with the toy company getting its hands on the main characters and Americanizing just the ones whose original names they don't like, but leaving others alone and not getting a whack at later-appearing ones. This leaves Tommy, JP, and Zoe on a team with Takuya, Koji, and Kouichi, and leaves members of the same family with a mix of American and Japanese names, and first names that don't fit with their last names (which are generally kept by the dub.) You get the odd Davis Motomiya, Tommy Himi, or Cody Hida, or family where Henry and Suzie have a dad named Janyu. (Cody's dad: Hiroki.) Yukio Oikawa, a villain of season two, even has his name given in Japanese order, becoming Oikawa Yukio.
• A Dog of Flanders (1975): One of the nods that George and Paul are Canon Foreigners is that they don't have traditional Belgian-sounding names like "Nello", "Alois", "Jehan", "Ensor" and "Baas".
• Doraemon: Nobita and the Haunts of Evil have the gang visiting the kingdom of Bauwan, whose denizens have assorted names including Kuntakku, Daburanda, Spiana, Saberu... and Kuntakku's best friend, Bruce.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Dragon Ball is generally loaded to the brim with weird, Punny Names. This trope is probably best demonstrated when Akira Toriyama decided to finally disclose Mr. Satan's real name in an interview, which happens to be the epic, bombastic name of (drumroll please) ... Mark. Turns out that somebody named their child while sober after all!
  • Mark is itself a pun. In Japanese, the name is pronounced "Ma-a-ku", which if you switch it up becomes "akuma," the Japanese word for devil.
  • Meanwhile you still have actual words (Gohan, Trunks, Cell, Satan, etc) as names along side anagrams (Videl, the aforementioned Maaku, etc), plus truncated words (Vegeta, Toma, etc), and randomly altered words (Kakarotto, Raditz, etc).
  • Many of the names are food puns. The Ginyu Force? They're dairy products. The Saiyans are Vegetables.
  • Piccolo is a weird case. Back in the original Dragon Ball, Demon King Piccolo and his children were named after instruments (Cymbal, Tambourine, etc). They're all dead by the time Dragon Ball Z starts, and Piccolo himself is the son of Demon King Piccolo. Then we find out that he's from Namek, where everyone has names based on snails (Dende, Nail, etc). So amongst his own people, he's an example of this trope.
• Fairy Tail gives us Lucy, Gray, Sheryl, Richard, Simon, and Wendy also Japanese ones such as Natsu, Ren, Hibiki, Ikaruga and Fukorou. Also we get Erza, Bixlow, Elfman, Gildartz. Also, there is an actual guy named Bob.
• Fake features New Yorkers with names like Randy and Carol alongside Bikky, which sounds like some sort of coated biscuit. It's presumably "Vicky" filtered through Japanese, but the character is male. Other characters include Jemmy, Dee, and Berkeley, whose names are less immediately bizarre but still not what you'd expect from your average American man.
• The Five Star Stories. The Mirage Knights is full of people with names like Nu. Suoad Graphight, Sir Bester (Close) Orbit & Maximum HOLTFORS Ballanche Kaien. Then there's a guy named Allen Bradford.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • In Amestris, you can find people with fairly usual English-sounding names like Edward or Alex, more "exotic" ones like Izumi and Selim, and slightly weird ones like Solf and Maes. Then there's plain whacky stuff, like Bido and Paninya. Amestris is shown to have a number of different ethnicities living within its borders, and many of the 'stranger' names are at least German-esque. And you also have Fuhrer King Bradley; Fuhrer is his title, King is his first name (not a title) and Bradley is his last name (not first name).
  • There's also Hohenheim's birthplace Xerxes, which seems to be an Ancient Greek Fantasy Counterpart Culture (which is inexplicably named after/has a king who shares a name with a Persian monarch). Hohenheim knew a guy there named Collins; he also knew a guy named Zuul. Though these people were slaves, and thus it's plausible they, or their parents, originated from a different nation and were captured and enslaved by the Xerxians(?).
  • The author herself says that for most of the characters, she simply picked up a big book on names, opened it up, and selected a random name.
• Gundam:
  • The entire franchise is fond of this, mixing exotic and strange sounding names like Haman, Char, and Beltorchika with names like Johnny, Christina, Terry, Sarah and the mundane Japanese name Hayato, and the occasional gratuitous-ly bad name like Crown or Slender. Almost every continuity features this, Gundam 00 subverting it by having the esoteric names of most of the characters (e.g. Lockon Stratos) be codenames for much more mundanely named people (e.g. Neil Dylandy).
  • Amuro's name in particular was chosen because Tomino thought it wasn't an actual name in any language, putting emphasis on the character's lack of nationality. (It actually is a surname in some parts of the world, including Japan, albeit a very rare one.). If he was Rei Amuro (with Rei as first name and Amuro as last name), he would have had a perfectly common Japanese name.
  • Char Aznable comes from French-Armenian singer Charles Aznavour. There is also Elpeo Ple in Gundam ZZ, whose name comes from a Japanese magazine called Lemon People, or L People. Paptimus Scirocco's name comes from the eponymous wind.
  • The cake is, as the saying goes, taken by Gundam SEED. Seriously, Mu La Flaga? And his father Al Da Flaga? And we're suppose to be believe they're French-Canadian? Slightly more sensible is Kazahana Aja and her mother, Loretta. Or Rau Le Creuset, who shares his last name with a line of real-world high-end French cookware whose parent company also built cannons during WWI.
  • Natarle Badgiruel, end stop. With a name like that, her winding up in command of Dominion, the evil copy of the Archangel, came as no surprise whatsoever. (take out the "ue" and you have Bad Girl..)
  • Patrick Zala may have found his name too plain, so he named his son Athrun (said being 100% romanizable as the still exotic, but far more recognizable to Anglophones, Aslan).
  • Witch from Mercury plays this trope as straight as possible. Names in this series range from ordinary (Martin Upmont) to possibly-evolved-from-real-names (Delling Rembran, Nika Nanaura, Suletta Mercury) to way out there (Chuatury Panlunch). And then there's literally a character called Bob.
• Given the scattershot nature of how the colony world in GUN×SWORD was populated, one can't be too surprised at how the names work. Our heroes are Van, Wendy, Carul ("Carmen 99!", Ray, and Joshua. Our villains include Gadved, Carossa, and Fasalina. And Michael. Also, Michael pronounces his name like Hebrew/Greek/Russian, "Mikhail" (in Japanese anyway), while his sister is named Wendy (which is British to the extent it's anything).
• Hello! Sandybell: There's Mark, Kitty, Leslie, Eva, Ricky, Julie, Linda, Lawrence, Alec and Sandybell. This anime takes place in the UK, where even "Sandybell" isn't a common name.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers is a bit hit and miss with the human names of nations. Some names like Arthur Kirkland and Francis Bonnefoy don't raise any eyebrows because the names aren't all that out of place for the country they represent, while others like Lovino aren't even real names in the first place. Other names like Toris are real names, but aren't common in the character's country or region. Or, as in Toris' unfortunate case, are more often used for animals than for people. This might be a case of the author simply using the wrong diminutive of a name or picking names at random from a book.
• In Hunterx Hunter, because the series takes place in an alternate world with only some similarities to ours, the names can seem somewhat unusual, such as Gon, Killua, and Razor. However, there are also plenty of characters with normal Japanese names: Nobunaga, Menchi, Kikyo, and many others. Since it is a different world, you'd expect all of the characters to have strange and alien-like names, but not all do.
• If a Demon Lord Were to Get Married in the Countryside: Amongst other characters with normal Japanese names like Toneri Yamada, Nonoa Non Aleha has a bizarre-sounding name.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • The cast of each Part can have sometimes normal sounding names and really bizarre ones because of Araki's habit to draw his names from any source, especially musical ones. One one hand, you can get people named George, Jonathan, or Joseph; one the other hand, you will meet characters names Wamuu, D&G or D-I-S-C-O. Certain Japanese characters (such as all of the part-Japanese Jojos - Jotaro and both Josukes) have somewhat unusual names to draw a pun or a meaning, however most characters in Part 4 have perfectly normal Japanese names.
  • In Golden Wind, Team Bucciarati is composed by Bruno, Leone, Guido (all normal Italian names), and Giorno (means "day" but is not used as a first name), Pannacotta (an Italian dessert that isn't used as a first name in real life), and Narancia (which isn't even an Italian word in the first place, being a combination of the Spanish and Italian words for "orange")^note  Giorno Giovanna's name was taken from a record producer named Giovanni Giorgio Moroder, and flipped around and distorted. Pannacotta's last name, Fugo, is a rare Italian verb which means "to force someone to retreat", also a Meaningful Name, since he fears his own Stand Power and refuses to fight Diavolo; it may also be a corruption of the rare Italian name Furio. Most of the characters are named after foods, which would be an Aerith if those were their first names (Risotto Nero, Vinegar Doppio), but are perfectly normal as last names, with a normal first name (Zucchero, whose first name is Mario). A couple of villains are named Squalo and Tiziano: while Tiziano is an actual name in Italy^note  and a twofold reference to the Renaissance painter Vecellio and famous pop singer Ferro, Squalo means "Shark" but is never given as a name.
• In Kaze no Shōjo Emily, there's Emily, Aunt Elizabeth, Teddy, Perry, John, Elizabeth, Juliet, Douglas, Nancy, Ilse and Rhoda. Ilse and Rhoda were common girl's name in the 1900s (when the anime takes place), but in the current day and age they look quite odd.
• Knight Princess brings us Yashi Aighe, Schalke Ninefeathers, Mandatha Yal, and ... Prince Archie Cooder.
• Little Witch Academia has Akko Kagari (Japanese name), Diana Cavendish (English name), Lotte Jansson (Swedish-Finnish name), Sucy Manbanvaran (Filipino name), and Luna Nova (Italian or Spanish). The weird names are not arbitrary, although research may be required to make sense of them. Lotte Jansson is a perfectly good shortened given name along with a perfectly good Swedish surname (as Swedish speakers makes up for a noticeable minority in Finland where she's hailed from), Sucy Manbavaran is a slightly modified Tagalog word (either "susi", which is "key", or "suci" which is "holy"; "susi" is also "key" in Cebuano) with a modified Cebuano word as surname ("mambabarang", which is "sorceress"), which makes sense since she's from Southeast Asia, most likely the Philippines, where Tagalog is major official language and Cebuano a minority official language. Luna Nova translates as "new moon" most likely in late Latin, after adjectives became postponed to substantives but before it became a Romance language, and Luna is a name used for girls in Italy and Spanish-speaking countries.
• The wielders of One For All in My Hero Academia fall into this. There’s Yoichi, Kudo,Hikage,Diagoro, Ein, Nana, Toshinari, Izuku and the third who is…Bruce. Most of the names are Japanese and he’s the apparent exception
• Now and Then, Here and There: The females all have common names (Sis is likely a nickname, Soon is a Korean name, and Abelia is the name of a plant). The males, on the other hand, have crazy, not so common names, like Hamdo, Nabuca, and Tabool. Neither Shuzo Matsutani count, since he comes from our time period. Nor does Lala Ru, as she's not even human.
• One Piece
  • Many instances of Those Two Guys in One Piece tend toward a variation of this, often by pairing a Western name with a Japanese name. Johnny and Yosaku. Chess and Kuromarimo. The Admirals' real names are Sakazuki, Kuzan, and Borsalino. Really, it's to the point where the Blackbeard Pirates (except for Shiryuu) and the Supernovas, both groups that are named after historical pirates and trend toward Western names, stand out by not using this trope. As far as linguistic origins for names, One Piece certainly shines for its variety.
  • The main crew itself varies from regular western-sounding names (Robin, Franky and Brook) to weird western-sounding names (Chopper) to regular eastern-sounding names (Nami) to weird eastern-sounding names (Sanji and Jimbei) to just made-up names (Luffy and Usopp).
• Pandemonium Wizard Village: Some of the characters have unusual or fantastical names, like Zipher, Molte, or Brow... and then you have names like Anna and Marco.
• Pilot Candidate, but a variation. Most of the characters have weird-sound European-ish names (like the main character, Zero and the resident bad boy Hiead), with very few characters (such as Saki, Azuma, Yu and Kazuhi) who have actual Japanese names. Zero's falls under Translation Convention, since his real name is Rei, and it's lampshaded, since Zero's colony is so far away from the main ones that they use Kanji rather than the universal language.
• Pokémon:
  • The movie Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life gives us the two ruin guardians "Sheena" and "Kevin". Way to go.
  • In Pokémon Adventures, all of the Pokedex Holders are named after the core series of games. So we get names such as Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Black, White, X, Y, Sun, Moon, Scarlet, and Violet for main characters. Among these, only Red, Crystal, Ruby, Sapphire, Pearl, Scarlet, and Violet would be common real-world names. And Ruby, Pearl, and Violet are actually guys.
    • The two known exceptions for this are the Dex Holders based off the main characters in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, who are named Lack-Two (Rakutsu in Japanese, a corruption of how they would say "Black 2") and Whi-Two (Faitsu in Japanese, a corruption of how they would say "White 2"). Although their names sound ridiculous even when considering the series' naming tradition, it's heavily implied that those aren't their real names.
    • English translations have tried to soften this on occasion, changing "Lack-Two and Whi-Two" to "Blake and Whitley" and "X and Y" to "Xavier and Yvonne".
  • Other Pokemon properties suffer from this too. For example Pokémon Golden Boys has "Chris", which seems to the short for "Crystal". Her peers however, are "Gold" and "Black".
• Rave Master provides us with names like Julia, Elie, Lucia, Gale, and Ruby, as well as some Japanese names like Haru, Shiba, Gemma, and Shuda, and also gives us Sieg Hart, Belnika, Deep Snow, Blank, and Beryl.
• Regalia: The Three Sacred Stars has lots of perfectly reasonable Japanese and Western European names ... and Yuinshiel Asteria.
• Shaman King's X-Laws, introduced in order, are Marco, Denvat, Mirne, Larky, Bunstar, Porf and Kevin. There's also the Lilly Five: Lilly, Millie, Ellie, Sally and Sharona.
• In SoltyRei, the names of the R.U.C. are Integra, Accela, Celica ... and Sylvia.
• Soul Eater has Western names such as Liz, Patty, Justin, Blaire, Kim, Jaqueline, Angela ... and some Japanese names like Tsubaki, Mifune, and Maka (an anagram for "kama", or "scythe"). Then you have some very random names like Black☆Star, Death the Kid (who in fairness, isn't human, and is the son of the Grim Reaper named Death), Harvar, Kirikou (looks Japanese, but isn't), Spirit ... However, the manga mentions the characters being from different countries. Kirikou is ethnically African in appearance, Maka and Tsubaki have been mentioned to be Japanese, and Liz and Patty Thompson are American. Plus, the author just adores theme naming. The use of the trope is explained in Soul Eater Not!: many students (including the eponymous character) are Only Known by Their Nickname.
• In Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure, due to their family having a mix of Mexican and Japanese culture, the Amamiya family members have a mix of English/Spanish names (Carlos, Elena, Reina, Anna) and Japanese names (Kaede, Touma, Takuto, and Ikuto).
• Trigun has normal names like Milly, Meryl, and Nicholas, alongside names like Vash, Knives, and Legato.
• Ultimate Muscle has Seiuchin, and then his mother and sister are named Suzy and Dorothy, respectively. Suddenly Wally Tusket doesn't seem so out of place.
• In Vampire Knight, Yuuki, Ichijou, Haruka, Kaname, Aidou, Zero, Ichiru, Juri and ... Maria and Sara?
• Voltes V: The aliens of Boazania have names like Heinel, Jangal, Zuhl, Gohl, Zambajil, Belgan, Gurul, Zaki and...Katherine? She's also a Nice Girl, something that's uncommon amongst the Boazanians...
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • The English dub of the anime gets this due to only about half the characters getting dub names. Thus you get Japanese names (Yugi Mouto, Seto Kaiba, Ryou Bakura), normal sounding English names (Joey Wheeler, Tristan Taylor), and names which aren't normal anywhere (Tea Gardner, Duke Devlin) all growing up in the same town and going to school together. The dub also zig-zagged Japanese name ordering when it came to the Kaiba brothers - the cast all refer to Mokuba by first name but Kaiba by surname, which can give the impression the dub just wanted to differentiate between them or keep a sense of formality between the gang and Seto Kaiba, as calling someone by last name is uncommon in the West even between distant acquaintances.
  • Also, most (but not all) of the Japanese names were unusual in the first place. "Yugi" is a weird first name (which means "game"), and "Bakura" is a weird last name, but "Anzu Mazaki" and "Hiroto Honda" (the Japanese names of Tea and Tristan respectively) are perfectly normal names.
• Zatch Bell! gives Mamodo names such as Elzador, Brago, Victoreem, Zaruchim, Demolt ... and Danny, Vincent, Keith and Ted. Even some of the humans have less known names whereas others are normal. Abiira Sabiira, Riin Vise, Chita, Aleshie, Grubb ... and Elly, Nicole, Megumi, Gustav and Alvin. Granted, as the humans are from all over the world, they clearly do not have names from the same cultures, but the Mamodo are not so lucky.

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