I Have An Isshu With "Unova"
I was really disappointed with that. :/
I see they wanted to innovate even more, but renaming a region feels just wrong. And Unova it's a terrible name...
IMO,
Unova is an awesome name, but I wish it (Unova) was the universal name for the region (possibly save for Spanish due to the reason quoted below). The Japanese name of the region should have been Unova from the
start, citing the origin as from a foreign language. I think a lot of us have become too accustomed to Isshu now, and the name change this late since the Japanese BW release is a bit jarring and is going to, in my case, take a long while to adjust to, if ever.
But yeah, drastically renaming a region like that is just wrong. It just ruins the whole spirit of the Pokemon region names. Despite Isshu's strong resemblance to the terms issue and tissue, I still like it as a name...
Actually Sinnoh's Japanese name was Shin'ō, and Hoenn's was and Hoenn was just little diffrent from it's Japanese name which was Hoen (they just added an n) so only Sinnoh and Isshu really have had real name changes with Isshu have the most drastic from Isshu to Unova (just correcting you on your trivia is all :) )
Yeah - I thought they would just change a letter or two, or just change it to the word
Issue. But Unova is pretty drastic...
I honestly hate Unova, it's not appealing to me at all. Isshu, however, was awesome and [S-HIGHLIGHT]I will not be calling Isshu "Unova" anywhere unless I officially have to, lol :(
[/S-HIGHLIGHT]
Btw. A better way of thinking of Unova -
"A star that suddenly becomes much brighter and then gradually returns to its original brightness..." found from the online dictionary.
U = You.
So, Unova means a place where you can be a star, but when you leave, the... star-quality wears away, promoting that you should stay in Isshu.
I'm liking the multiple meanings
Unova can have... As for your only calling Unova Isshu, I think I might have done that as well...I'm certainly doing that for some of the starters (still undecided on Pokabu and Tsutarja; but I am
ALWAYS calling Mijumaru
Wotter (or possibly Mijumaru if needed), no matter what).
Yeah it does...oddly I have never dealt with a situation like this before as I have never really gotten used to the Japanese names of the Regions or of the starters but this generation I saw and got used to it's Japanese name but it's still easy to transition :)
Unova really sounds cool :D
I know! Getting to know everything by the Japanese names and having to switch to English (or your local language) gets
really frustrating!! If the localized name is better than the Japanese one, that helps it a lot though...
WORST RENAME EVER!
Isshu was awesome :( why Unova? it sounds like its trying too hard to top every other regions name :/
I know! Personally the only Isshu I have with Unova is that I have to adjust, and the Japanese naming of the region is now a
Missed Moment of Awesome, because Unova makes
so much better sense with the thematic element of Generation V being the
rebirth of Pokemon and all....
Idk, I don't mind that they changed it personally. After all changing a couple of letters from the Japanese name isn't that creative either...
As for meanings, consider this. First there's the whole UN (united) (states) OV (Of) A (america) thing.... but then there's the fact that Isshu, iirc, could be taken to mean 'one variety'.
Unova --> 'uno' + va, or 'unum' (one) and 'nova' (new)... if anything it actually seems to be a multi-layered name. Which seems rather neat to me.
Reason why a lot of you dislike it I feel may be due to the fact you're used to the old name... but you may grow to like it, as many people have admitted to doing every gen, and with for instance the starter Pokemon themselves when they were first released...one could go on. tl;dr - I don't feel it's that bad and the name actually still fits, IMO.
WTF?
Isshu is supposed to mean
one variety?
Very strange... (Sidenote: reminds me of a comment someone made on a Bulbanews article about the article title being titled
It Isshu What It Is, which implies the meaning of "take it or leave it, because it's all we have", something seen as a negative business concept). Unova fits the region excellently as a name as opposed to Isshu. But Isshu isn't a bad name at all; it should have been saved for a future region's name. If we get a region with a suckish name in every language, I'm naming it Isshu (mass confusion ensues). :rambo:
As for the "changing a couple letters from the Japanese name" process, I don't think it is meant to be creative, but rather to make the name's spelling look a bit better aesthetically (well, to some people's eyes). For example, IMO I think that transliterating
Houen to
Hoenn is a plus, because the Japanese spelling sort of looks awkward....
The Spanish name change is likely because "no va" means "doesn't go" in Spanish. The change wouldn't have been so sudden to me had they done it earlier, but TWO MONTHS after the Japanese B/W release is too long. I'll probably use both names interchangeably.
LOL at that meaning along with Isshu's "one variety" meaning. :cer_laugh: But couldn't they have used a corruption like
Unueva? (
uno and estrella
nueva; the latter of which means
nova in Spanish, from my research). I can't even see an origin for
Teselia, and all the other localized names seem to have something implying
one/1 or the letter
U (possibly standing for United States of America, as Isshu/Unova is based on New York). So the Spanish name is the odd one out, despite
Teselia sounding very pretty. I'm actually very surprised that the Spanish region name didn't even incorporate the term
uno, as the Spanish name for
"1" is, spelling-wise, a bit closer to the Latin name than the English name "one" is.
And yeah, the timing of the name change makes the whole ordeal even worse...
I laugh at all the English players who have to adjust now, thank god I'm Japanese.
Anyway, Unova....meh, will always be イッシュ to me.
-_- This is why there should've been a simultaneous worldwide BW release, lol...so we can all adjust to our localized names fairly quickly rather than having difficulty in struggling to shift away from the Japanese labels to the English ones...
I'm sure GameFreak isn't so smart, but "u" or "Y" (upsilon) is a Greek letter with the symbolic meaning of two diverging paths -- one of virtue and the other of vice. "Nova" in Latin strictly means "new." Therefore, "Unova" is a place of new beginnings, where one can choose a path of good or evil, regardless of their past choices.
It makes sense because Unova is a completely different country altogether and the theme of good / evil is reflected in Black / White and the dichotomy between elements in the new series (i.e. nature vs. technology, wind & lightning, etc.)
Of course, no one but me would have thought of that.
Very interesting symbolism find...I'm liking
Unova even more! :D
In conclusion,
Unova should've been the name from the start, including the Japanese versions, and should have been present in all regions instead of introducing all the different localized changes for Isshu. Despite the Spanish Isshu with "Unova", I still think they should have preserved the name.
Dialga had a similar problem with the
-alga suffixpossibly implying algae in Spanish, but the name was still kept. All the localizers have to do is cite a foreign origin for the name instead, and it should be fine.
And LOL,
Unova sounds like a girl's name that would be used in the
Legend of Zelda series. And when I first saw the thread title, I thought that the OP was trying to make a very awkward pun with the phrase "gone under/over" to reference the (apparent?) declining quality of Isshu and the newly revealed English names...
