Zuggy wrote:Thanks for explaining that! I imagine then that words like Seele and Nerv are written in katakana in the script as they are forgein words then? If so, would that mean SEELE and NERV are the more accurate way they should be written in English? With Shinji Ikari becoming Shinji Ikari?
It doesn't mean they're necessarily more accurate, since they're not known to be acronyms of any sort.
Having their given names in Katakana is just a quirk of the creators, like having SEELE and NERV in all caps. Having Shinji's given name capitalized isn't more accurate. You use Latin capitals for Katakana when transliterating it into Romaji if you intend to emphasize its foreignness, or that it has no Kanji equivalent.
Forgive my ignorance here: how are words or names written in katakana or hiragana written in kanji? So for Asuka from your explanation wouldn't make sense having a kanji equivalent because it's not a native name, but Shinji would - right? How do I go about finding the kanji for the name Shinji? Might be easier just to find a person's name online and see if the kanji is written along with it thinking about it - after one google search I came across a fellow called Shinji Mikami 越沼真司 but I dunno where Shinji ends and Mikami begins, also the other Shinjis on wikipedia are all spelt differently - are there multiple spellings in kanji or is wikipedia just full of lies?
Kanji is notorious for having a number of homophones- different characters (with very different meanings) that have a similar or the same pronunciation. Shinji might not have a particular Kanji equivalent, but you could try looking up the Kanji for Shinji Higuchi's name. One of the more common meanings of Shinji is "belief" or "faith".
Of course, now the reason why the names are given in Katakana becomes clearer- he meant them to be interpreted whatever which way, since each Kanji has a specific meaning tied to it. That is, unless you're looking for more complex wordplay involving Katakana and Kanji characters, or Hiragana and Kanji characters, since the strokes from one character can be combined with another to form a new one. One example of this sort of punning happens in the Episode title "Saigo no Shisha".
Its been around 5 days now, so when are either of you going to back that up, or are you both just talking bollocks on the sidelines? You haven't even looked into how the names are spelt in kanji (and whatever other forms of writing) to find out whether or not they have a sympatric meaning with the characters, and even if you have done that you have utterly failed to provide any evidence that backs up your assertion here. These types of posts that Furu and UrsusArctos posted there are the most annoying type on this forum.
Don't be rude. I was just giving my opinion.
I didn't bother to go any deeper simply because the Kanji for the name "Ayanami" fit her character and purpose well enough, if you take the Nihon Kaigun interpretation as correct. I might be wrong, and there's nothing stopping you from finding out more. I'm not interested at all in digging any deeper because of the danger of overanalyzing the whole thing.