Japanese For "Dragon"?

[Piccolo Daimao]

What is the Japanese for "Dragon"? I've heard that it's "Ryu", but I've also heard that it's "Ron", as in "Shenlong", the Dragon God. Is there one true dragon, or a number of different ones.

Also, in the Japanese version of DBZ Movie 13, what do they call the Dragon Fist?

[VegettoEX]

The generic Japanese word for "dragon" is 竜 / ryuu. You'll primarily see this in usage, occasionally with (like with the title of our favorite series) the English word being written out in katakana as ドラゴン / doragon (do - ra - go - n).

To jump ahead to your movie 13 question, the attack is ryuu-ken (or just "Dragon Fist"), similar to how it is in Street Fighter (with "Shoryuuken", or commonly just dropping the long vowel to "Shoryuken"). Goku even shouts this aloud as he uses it, so it's hard to miss.

Then you get into the purely-Chinese stuff. I'll do my best, but someone else will have to jump in to clarify.

We've got 神龍 as a character. He's the "Dragon God". The furigana above it tells us to approximate the Chinese characters and their pronunciation in Japanese as シェンロン (which we as English speakers would then turn around and romanize as shenron). It's coming from Chinese, though, which you'd romanize out as something like shén lóng (with the second character being the "dragon", and the first one being the "god"). Many elements early on use their Chinese namings, such as the Dragon Balls, themselves (for example, Yi Xing Qiu vs Ii Shin Shuu for the one-star ball).

Aaaaaaaaand then you could get into the whole Asian mythology of dragons, which I wouldn't even begin to imagine I could explain to anyone.

[Piccolo Daimao]

OK, thanks!

[Olivier Hague]

The generic Japanese word for "dragon" is 竜 / ryuu.
[...]
We've got 神龍 as a character. He's the "Dragon God".

Note that it's not the same Chinese character though: 竜 / 龍

[ChaojiShucaiRen]

It could also simply be 神龙. Just for completion's sake.

[Olivier Hague]

It could also simply be 神龙. Just for completion's sake.

Not in Japanese, no.

[ChaojiShucaiRen]

It could also simply be 神龙. Just for completion's sake.

Not in Japanese, no.

No, I know not in Japanese I was adding to EX's translation into Chinese.

[Puto]

We've got 神龍 as a character.

Interestingly enough, putting that in a romaji converter without furigana gets you "shinryû".

[Hujio]

We've got 神龍 as a character.

Interestingly enough, putting that in a romaji converter without furigana gets you "shinryû".

OK, I'll bite. What's so interesting?

I mean, one of the proper furigana for 神 is shin, and the main proper furigana for 龍 is ryū. And when you combine the kanji together, the main proper furigana is shinryū because it is an actual title of a dragon. Shinryū is a mythical Chinese dragon that was said to control the wind and rain. So when you put the name, written in Japanese, into a converter, I think it's only natural that it'd come out as shinryū.

[Olivier Hague]

Yeah, if anything, it would be surprising if you got something else... ^^;

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

So Shinryuu and Shenlong both mean "Dragon God" and Toriyama used Shenlong to go with the Chinese theme of the story?

[Olivier Hague]

So Shinryuu and Shenlong both mean "Dragon God"

Yeah, they're the same word in written form, but the former is Japanese and the latter Chinese.

and Toriyama used Shenlong to go with the Chinese theme of the story?

Presumably, yeah.

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

Thanks a lot!