Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-26140824-20150228110725/@comment-26140824-20150303225052

It seems as though this issue is not yet settled. Earlier today I edited Hazama's etymology section with a more accurate translation of the Japanese noun (狭間, narrow space/arrowslit, not sure where the 'edge' translation came from) and removed the speculative Arabic etymology. This edit was partially reverted by BP Vermilion with a note on the definition of etymology, suggesting that the Arabic Hazama is as equally valid as the Japanese Hazama.

I don't think this is viable for several reasons. It's not simply enough that a word root 'make sense'. For one thing, 'He Defeated' could apply to virtually any character since this is a video game about fighting. In any case, all of this assumes the following:

The designer knew Hazama meant something meaningful in Arabic, and

The designer intended for Hazama to be read from the Arabic meaning rather than the designer's native Japanese

These are both incredibly improbable. The note BP Vermilion left continues to say that if the Arabic reading of Hazama should be removed, then so should the Hebrew reading of Rachel. I disagree for several reasons. First of all, Rachel was originally a Hebrew noun for sheep, and over the past thousand years it has been used primarily as a given name. Rachel is, first and foremost, a name. That it is being used as a name should hardly be of question; etymology should be used here only to show what the name originally meant. The etymology section for Rachel Alucard is actually very good.

BP Vermilion states that 'Hazama' is Arabic for 'He Defeated', which is incorrect. In Arabic, Hazama is a passive, transitive, imperfect verb; the noun form would be 'Hazim'. 'Hazama' means 'To Defeat', without conjugation or nominalization. It seems absurd that it would be considered as a name for a character, especially when (assuming the designer was actually aware of the Arabic meaning), Arabic has such a rich lexicon for names.

More to the point, it seems even more absurd that the designer chose the Arabic meaning over the far more obvious and probable Japanese meaning. It's extremely uncertain whether the designers had any working knowledge of Arabic, Turkish, or Serbian, given the lack of references throughout the series. Isn't it just more likely that the Japanese designer for the Japanese video game used the Japanese meaning they already know?

Conversely, Hazama in Japanese has several meanings, almost any of which can be rationalized to fit what we know about the character (snakes slither through small spaces, the traditional arrowslit resembles a snake's eye, and in feudal Japan the arrowslit was the space in a fortification wall through which archers/riflemen could fire on outside forces). I don't think it's necessary to wax philosophical about these as long as the kanji and most likely reading are presented.

Finally, if one etymology is deemed canon then any others are irrelevant speculation. It doesn't matter if Hazama means Trilby Balisong in Esperanto if another etymology is obvious and probable.

If I'm not welcome to continue editing this wiki I understand, but I would at the very least like to know what mistakes I have made. I thought I understood the rules at the conclusion of this thread, but now I feel as if I understand them less than ever. Should I post all of the notes for my edits here in the forum first?

Thank you for your time.