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The names of the Ruinous Quartet

So I’ve been playing Pokemon Violet and the names of the four Ruinous Pokemon are clearly derived from Chinese, so I thought I’d share some thoughts on what they mean.

The Ruinous Quartet comprise:

Wo-Chien

Chien-Pao

Ting-Lu

Chi-Yu

The first thing to note is that the names seem to use the Wade-Giles system of romanisation, as opposed to the Pinyin system used today. I don’t know Wade-Giles, so I’m going to be translating these to Pinyin for the explanations.

Wo-Chien

The Pinyin equivalent of Wo-Chien is Wo Jian. This doesn’t tell us what the tones are, but the Mandarin name for Wo-Chien according to Bulbapedia is 古简蜗 - Gǔjiǎnwō. 蜗 (Wō) means “snail” (more commonly said as 蜗牛 - wōniú). 简 (Jiǎn) is more difficult to translate because it can take on a lot of meanings depending on context and what words it’s paired up with (it can be a noun, adjective or verb), but in this context it refers to the strips of bamboo that were used for writing in Ancient China before paper was invented. These were strung together so they could be rolled up (kind of like sushi mats lol) when not being read:

This is why Wo-Chien is the Tablets of Ruin. This version of 简 (Jiǎn) isn’t commonly used anymore, instead it’s more usually used to mean “simple” (简单 jiǎndān).

Chien-Pao

This one is fairly straight-forward. The Pinyin of Chien-Pao is Jian Bao. This “Jian” is a different word from the one above referring to the bamboo slips, which was 简 (Jiǎn) - this one is 剑 (Jiàn), meaning “sword”. And Bao here is 豹 (Bào), meaning “leopard” (not buns, which incidentally is 包 Bāo). Hence the Mandarin name for Chien-Pao is 古剑豹 (Gǔjiànbào), meaning ancient sword leopard. So Chien-Pao is literally Sword Leopard, which makes sense as it’s the Sword of Ruin.

Ting-Lu

Ting-Lu in Pinyin is Ding Lu, and the Mandarin name is 古鼎鹿 (Gǔdǐnglù). Lu here refers to 鹿 (Lù), meaning “deer”. Ding refers to 鼎 (Dǐng), which are ancient Chinese cauldrons with three legs and two handles (below). This is depicted on Ting-Lu’s head and is why it’s known as the Vessel of Ruin. So Ting-Lu is basically the Cauldron Deer.

As a bonus, the character 鼎 (Dǐng) can be traced back to a hieroglyphical depiction of the actual cauldron itself (source):

Chi-Yu

This one is a bit of a mystery. The Pinyin for Chi-Yu is Ji Yu. Now Yu is obviously 鱼 (Yú), meaning “fish”, but it’s unclear what character the Ji refers to. All three previous Pokemon’s names derive from the animal and their associated item (tablets, sword, cauldron). Chi-Yu’s associated item are beads, but that translates to 珠 (zhū), not “ji”. The Mandarin name for Chi-Yu is 古玉鱼 (Gǔyùyú), meaning ancient jade fish. This is another example of different Chinese characters being apparently spelt the same but said differently -  玉 yù vs 鱼 yú. Maybe this is why they didn’t go with Jade for the English, both because Yu can stand for both and Yu-yu would look somewhat silly. 

One possibility (which is what Bulbapedia goes with) is that Ji Yu is  鲫鱼 (Jìyú), which is a type of carp (note also that Bulbapedia records it as goldfish, but goldfish is 金鱼 jīnyú). 

Another (less likely but I think more interesting) possibility is that Chi-Yu isn’t Wade-Giles at all, but just Pinyin, in which case “Chi” could be 赤 (Chì), which is a fancy word for red (红 - hóng), kind of like how you can just have red but if it’s scarlet or crimson then all of a sudden it’s more exciting even though no one’s actually thinking about the precise shade differences. This would fit given Chi-Yu’s fire typing.

Aaaaanyway I hope this has been interesting and happy 2023!

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