Why is the "FRIEZA" spelling wrong?

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

Well, i can't see why you're getting this wrong though.

"Getting"? I got it wrong once and I wasn't doing it just to piss him off or anything like that.

[Silver Sinspawn]

But the guy who posted after you got it wrong too.

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

But the guy who posted after you got it wrong too.

Probably because I got it wrong in the first place.

[Adamant]

Also, for the love of God, can someone please address why exactly "Hildegarn" gained the fanbase's favor over the marginally more correct "Hirudegarn"?

Largely because the fanbase went ten years or so without knowing what the hell the name was supposed to be a pun on. Same reason you see Thousar referred to as "Sauzer" a lot.

[Cipher]

Largely because the fanbase went ten years or so without knowing what the hell the name was supposed to be a pun on. Same reason you see Thousar referred to as "Sauzer" a lot.

I was just being facetious, because those are fair points for reverting to those spellings.

But for the sake of arguing the point here, if anyone's going to adamantly decry the use of "Frieza," then they'd have to do the same for "Hildegarn" and "Sauzer" and "Bulma" and every other strange romanization which doesn't quite get the pun, since those are evern farther off. "Frieza" ain't a pretty looking name, but it's not hurting or confusing anyone if it stays in marginal use.

[Amigo Ten]

Is Hildegarn widely used? I see Hirudegarn more often than not.

And I think Frieza gets that hate it does because there's seemingly no reason for it. As Hujio explained, I can't really imagine the thought process of whoever was in charge of transliterating that name at Funi.

The same goes for quite a few of Funi's names. Like Jeice. Why choose "ei" then when the chose "ie" for Freeza? Why not use "ee" for either? Why use "Vegito" when they didn't use "Vegita" or "Gogita"? Why keep the extra vowel in "Dabura" when they didn't in "Kuririn"? And so on.

[desirecampbell]

But for the sake of arguing the point here, if anyone's going to adamantly decry the use of "Frieza," then they'd have to do the same for "Hildegarn" and "Sauzer" and "Bulma" and every other strange romanization which doesn't quite get the pun, since those are evern farther off. "Frieza" ain't a pretty looking name, but it's not hurting or confusing anyone if it stays in marginal use.

The point isn't that 'Freeza' gets the pun across better, the point is that it's logically the correct romanization.


First Toriyama took the English word freezer:

freezer (furiizaa) → フリーザー (furiizaa)

Which in katakana is normally (again, Toriyama didn't just make this up, it's the standard way one would write this word) written as フリーザー, with the elongated 'a' sound at the end (again, to be clear, this is normal transliteration of English to Japanese sound structures - 'er' sounds almost always become elongated 'a' sounds).

Next, Toriyama wanted to change the word slightly (to make the pun less obvious, perhaps).

フリーザー (furiizaa) → フリーザ (furiiza)

So he changed the final syllable from a long 'a' to a short 'a'.

Finally, how should this character's name be romanized back into English? Well, ;et's look at the big picture of where the name comes from:

freezer (furiizaa) → フリーザー (furiizaa) → フリーザ (furiiza)

So, it started off as 'freezer' how did it change?

freezer → furiizaa → furiiza

Okay, so it's 'freezer' with a short 'a' sound instead of the 'long a'/'er' sound. So freezer becomes Freeza.



There. There's literally no simpler way to explain this. Everybody good?

[Hujio]

So I say, if you spell it as "Frieza", then based on that same logic, you must now use "Breef". It's only fair, right?

I'm going to go ahead and (very calmly, and only for the sake of debate) say that you could choose either "Breef" or "Brief," because once you step outside of "Buriifu," it's open to interpretation. And each one maintains the pun perfectly well unless you're the most literal person on the planet.

So which do I prefer out of "Brief" vs "Breef" and "Frieza" vs "Freeza"? Brief and Freeza. But it's not as if the alternate spellings don't maintain the pun perfectly well. I mean, I get it either way; his name's derived from "freezer." A vowel change doesn't really take away from that.

Alright, I'm going to try to be as nice as possible with all of this, since everyone here is clearly a Japanese expert. Certain things are not open to interpretation! The fact that you said "once you step outside of 'Buriifu,' it's open to interpretation" clearly shows you don't really know what you're talking about. I really don't know how to say it any nicer than that, because maybe some of this will sink in. Dr. Brief's name is a literal name, based on the English word "brief". Katakana is used to take foreign words and integrate them into Japanese, so that the Japanese know how to pronounce them. So in Japanese, when you say 「ブリーフ」, you're literally saying "brief", because it's an English word. You can't just change the origin word for no damn reason. I realize it's being used as someones name, but it's a real word. It isn't open to interpretation! Saying that "breef" is acceptable is just idiotic.

ブリーフ = brief. Period. There's no debate or interpretation. That's just what it means. If you think it means something else, then you obviously don't know English, because last I checked the word "breef" isn't in the English dictionary.

As far as Freeza is concerned, I just don't understand why you'd insert an "i". If you had no preconception of the name "Frieza", there's no God forsaken way you'd come up with it on your own. Any translator would tell you that. Throwing in the "i" is just a translator throwing in their own mark, or twist, on the name, and whoever did it should be shot. Again, the name is based on the English word "freezer" (フリーザー; furiizaa). There's no interpreting here, since that's the word. They're equivalents. So wouldn't it stand to reason that when you drop the elongated vowel at the end, the beginning of the word would just stay the same. That would be the thinking of any sane translator, and of desire up above (his post beat mine).

I mean, wouldn't people be pretty pissed off if Viz just started spelling it "Bliech"? And I don't want to hear that we see it written as "Bleach" everywhere in Japan so that's not correct, because that's just hypocritical. "Freeza" is used everywhere in Japan, so what's the difference? Why can't I spell it "Bliech"? I'm just transliterating it phonetically, right? Or what about "One Peece" (ワンピース; Wan Piisu)? I mean, where do you draw the line? It's called logic. Try using it sometime. It's that simple. (That was directed at everyone, not anyone in particular.)

I call bull on this one. There's a clear difference between actual series titles, existing English words, and a character name which was both primarily written in katakana and already a bastardization for the sake of a pun.

But I thought once you step outside of the romanization it's all up to personal interpretation? So what's the difference between "bliech" and "breef"? You even said, "...each one maintains the pun perfectly well unless you're the most literal person on the planet." So I'm just transliterating it phonetically using my own personal interpretation and maintaining the pun, right? Now, I would never actually do that because it makes no damn sense, but it's a good example of using logic. Both cases use the same logic. Both are taken directly from English words. We've seen both written properly on Japanese merchandise as "Bleach" and "Dr. Brief". I just don't understand the need to fuck with something that doesn't need to be fucked with. I still maintain that "Frieza" does not accurately convey the pun. Knowing both Japanese and English, I can see no logical steps where you'd go from 「フリーザ」 to "Frieza". But like I said, that only makes sense if you properly know both languages...

[Cipher]

I really don't know how to say it any nicer than that, because maybe some of this will sink in. Dr. Brief's name is a literal name, based on the English word "brief". Katakana is used to take foreign words and integrate them into Japanese, so that the Japanese know how to pronounce them. So in Japanese, when you say 「ブリーフ」, you're literally saying "brief", because it's an English word. You can't just change the origin word for no damn reason. I realize it's being used as someones name, but it's a real word. It isn't open to interpretation! Saying that "breef" is acceptable is just idiotic.

I actually understand completely where you're coming from. I'm a fourth year Japanese student and understand the practices of shifting words in and out of katakana. I also agree that changing his name to "Breef" would be incredibly baffling, as is the change to "Frieza."

But I think that this point, we're never going to see eye-to-eye on this.

I simply disagree on completely disavowing all other spellings. I'll always maintain that there's a difference between character names/puns, and actual use of the word. There's especially a difference between pun-names and actual alphanumeric series titles, which is why it would be vastly more offensive to alter "Bleach" than to alter "Freeza." And while, yes, Brief and Freeza are clearly the most correct transliterations and absolutely the most logical conclusion, a vowel change simply isn't that aggregious. Funimation putting their own stupid twist on things? Oh, definitely. But however closely they follow the katakana of actual words, they're still names, and as long as the intent and pronunciation remain in tact, I couldn't care less.

If Funimation, for whatever unreasonable reason, had decided to localize a certain character as "Truhnks," are you honestly saying you wouldn't understand where his name comes from?

It's stupid and illogical, but it has to be the non-issue to end all non-issues. Especially when you have plenty of characters whose names have been romanized so that they don't keep the pun at all.

[desirecampbell]

Just because we can understand what the real name is, doesn't mean completely wrong names should be acceptable. Fuck, Freeza could be spelled 'Ghroiai'

GH - F - as in enough
R - R - as a regular r
O - I - as in women
I - Z - as in soldier
AI - A - as in wait

But it's fucking stupid to do so.

[Castor Troy]

The spelling "Frieza with an i (word censor)" will haunt me until the day I die. And all generations till the end of time.

[Super Sonic]

Well, simply, that's not his name.

フリーザ = Freeza

Viz has always gone with Freeza, but I will NEVER understand why FUNimation decided to go with Freeza. Same with Ti en. Or Chaozu, or the Ginyu Tokusentai.

Did you want the word "Tokusentai" kept? You would've needed to explain what that was in English.

On topic, I don't make a big deal about it, since the pronounciation is the same. Kinda how no one cared that they spelled Keiko's name differently on YYH. I guess the spelling change with Frieza was to make it look cool/foreign, or something.

[Dayspring]

True, but all English examples of F-R-I-E are pronounced "Fry." Fried egg, French fries, etc. Plus, what other Japanese ways are there to make the "E" pronunciation? It may be a matter of Piccolo vs Piccoro again.

There is "frieze", which I mentioned. It's pronounced the same as "freeze".

But 'Frieze' isn't originally English. It's like 'entrepreneur' in that it's merely appropriated by the language.

And I think you guys are missing the point of the post. Freeza is a pun on Freezer. Gotcha. But why do we assume Toriyama stopped the pun by switching the ER to an A? It's not supposed to be identical; that's the pun. Using desire's example of how it's 'Furiiza' could easily get us Furiza, Friiza, Fureeza as the name, because all are rooted in mispellings of the word 'freezer.'

[Amigo Ten]

But why do we assume Toriyama stopped the pun by switching the ER to an A?

Because that's what he did. That's the only difference between the two words. If he'd elongated the "u" as well or something, then it would be different. But the last syllable is the only change.

[Dayspring]

But why do we assume Toriyama stopped the pun by switching the ER to an A?

Because that's what he did. That's the only difference between the two words. If he'd elongated the "u" as well or something, then it would be different. But the last syllable is the only change.

The only change from 'Furiiza' though, not 'Freezer' itself.

It's like the argument of how 'Table' is a better pun than 'Tarble.' Both are puns! As long as it's a mispelling of the word 'Freezer' that sounds like 'Freeza,' then it's still arguably viable (provided the transliteration is a possible one, of course).

[Cipher]

It's like the argument of how 'Table' is a better pun than 'Tarble.' Both are puns! As long as it's a mispelling of the word 'Freezer' that sounds like 'Freeza,' then it's still arguably viable (provided the transliteration is a possible one, of course).

This. It's a pun. It's already a bastardization of the word. A syllabic alphabet is simply far less capable of manipulating an English word than a Latin based one.

The idea is the same. You take the word "freezer," screw around with it, but make sure the pun is still recognizable. "Freeza" and "Frieza" both do this. Non-issue, although I agree with "Freeza" providing the standard.

[Amigo Ten]

Why screw around with it more than it already has been screwed around with? What's the reason for doing that?

[Kaboom]

The whole notion that it "doesn't matter changing one little letter if it's pronounced the same" still is headache-inducing. Because if it's still going to sound the same, then why change it in the first place? What gave some dope at FUNimation the idea to swap out an 'E' for an 'I' to begin with?

It was unneeded, and boggles the mind. Which is why a lot of people are so against it, despite its minute nature. Because it's pointless and dumb.

[Savage68]

My only guess is that FUNi thought "Frieza" would appear cooler or edgier to their target demographic. They didn't change it for no reason.

[Olivier Hague]

Because Freeza is from the word freeze, or is it spelled frieze in english? Nope.

That's just the pun though. The name is based on the word "freezer", that's it.

What is it about the original kana spelling that implies that the 'furii' should be romanized any way other than 'Free'?

Wrong question. What is it about the original kana spelling that says it should be romanized as "free" and nothing else?

There's no reason to try to shoehorn an 'i' into the name.

Who said that would be wrong though? That was the question.

Just because FUNimation went out of their way to create their own spelling of the name, doesn't mean it's correct.

Just because your spelling is closer to the pun, it doesn't mean it's correct either.

Just so we're clear: I think "Freeza" is the proper spelling because that's how it's consistently spelled on official Japanese merchandise. Were it not for that though? I wouldn't be able to argue that "ie" is "wrong".

in Japanese, when you say 「ブリーフ」, you're literally saying "brief", because it's an English word. You can't just change the origin word for no damn reason. I realize it's being used as someones name, but it's a real word. It isn't open to interpretation!

Sure, it is. Like you said, it's a character's name, here. And it doesn't have to be spelled exactly like the word it's based on.