Re: Meaning of 零さん?

[Fumiaki Okushi]

I just want to add that I like the suggestion of Kuraban.

I agree that 蔵番 (kuraban) and 倉庫番 (sokoban) basically mean the same.
Just to help Friedrich make a decision, the differences of 蔵 (kura) and 
倉庫 (soko), at least to me, are in scale and the time period of use (not 
of the word but of the structure).
I feel 倉庫　(soko) to be larger and more recent/modern.
For example, Amazon warehouse is a 倉庫 (soko) and not a 蔵 (kura).
When I hear the word 蔵 (kura), I imagine a backyard shed that has been 
in the same family for generations.

For some visuals, please image search 倉庫 (soko) and 蔵 (kura) and I 
believe you'll see the difference.

Because the name change is motivated partly for possible future legal 
challenges, I did a quick search of trademarks and found that 蔵番 (in 
kanji form) is trademarked for commercial refrigerators (among others).

https://www.j-platpat.inpit.go.jp/c1800/TR/JP-2009-087157/BE2918167D037FAEE313D92CC966DBD76B722464CD0D236E3B3F9F2BBACDDA82/40/ja

Fumi(aki) Okushi



On 10/2/22 12:09 PM, Ryuichi Yamada wrote:
> Guten tag,
> 
> 零さん - Kobosan could be understood as a declaration of one's will not 
> to spill something, in some dialects.
> 
> The character 零 means zero when it is read as "rei."  You might want to 
> see the related Wiktionary page: 
> (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%9B%B6#Japanese)
> 
> It does not follow the principle, but I would like to suggest Kuraban - 
> 蔵番, which means basically the same thing as Sokoban - 倉庫番.
> 
> 
> Ryuichi Yamada
> 
> On 2022/10/03 1:07, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau wrote:
>> こんにちは,
>>
>> may I ask you for some native language speaker input on a proposal for 
>> a game
>> app name based on the Japanese language?
>>
>> For both legal and respect reasons the game app currently named 
>> KSokoban (see
>> https://apps.kde.org/ksokoban) should find a new name not conflicting 
>> with the
>> original game's name Sokoban (倉庫番), given the original game is 
>> still around
>> and alive (see 
>> https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%80%89%E5%BA%AB%E7%95%AA).
>> And yes, KSokoban is an old game developed in the KDE community, but 
>> had no
>> official release all the time since KDE 3. But currently a new release is
>> prepared, with the code now using Qt5 & KF5. And thus we came across this
>> challenge.
>>
>> The new name should still have some reference to the original name, 
>> given it
>> has become the generic name for this game principle for many.
>>
>> One of the ideas how to get to a new name was to take the latin character
>> variant of the name, reshuffle the characters and map the result onto 
>> another
>> Japanese name that makes some sense in relation to the game.
>> Due to lack of own real knowledge of the Japanese language that was 
>> approached
>> by creating possible sets of Japanese sylables/moras in latin 
>> characters and
>> asking translation services (like jisho.org) to come up with a 
>> Japanese word
>> matching that :)
>>
>> Sadly that yield little, only one seemed like a candidate which though 
>> needs
>> sanity checking by those actually understanding Japanese :)
>>
>> For "ko" "bo" "san" the match was 零さん. While the suffix "san" I 
>> remember to be
>> a male person addressing part (like "Mr."), the 零 part I have no clue 
>> about,
>> only was inspired what the dictionary said this character itself to 
>> mean (in
>> English): zero.
>>
>> So I wonder if 零さん would mean or at least could be understood as 
>> the Japanese
>> equivalent of an English "Mr. Zero"?
>> Or would it mean something totally different and be unfit here?
>>
>> A name with a meaning of "Mr. Zero" might work for the game in that 
>> either
>> "zero" references a person with total failure because one always 
>> blocking one-
>> self (getting "zero" done) or that it references a person completing 
>> all work
>> down to zero boxes left to push at their place (leaving "zero" 
>> behind). That
>> ambivalence might also offer identity both for people suffering to solve
>> levels as well as those just walking through it without any problems :)
>>
>> So, would "Kobosan" work as a name with sane Japanese meaning?
>>
>> Would you perhaps have other ideas for a name based on the 
>> name-estimation
>> principle (shuffle-latin-characters-and-map-reversely) described above?
>>
>> See general name discussion here:
>> https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-games-devel/2022-August/015427.html
>>
>> Cheers
>> Friedrich
>>
>>