The name "Xi"

[Tewligan]

I think you're overthinking it WAY too much. Are your players the kind to make fun of/joke about a lot of ingame stuff? If not, it's no problem. If they are, then they'll joke about whatever name you use anyway, so you may as well use this one. Use it, it's fine. And no one's going to confuse it with the pronoun "she", that's just a silly concern - they'll know what you mean through context and inflection.

 

[kitsune9]

My wife is native Chinese so if you have a particular name of the campaign that you'd like to come up with, give me a couple words and I can give you the pinyin pronounciation.

From my schooling in Mandurin, xi is pronounced "she".

I personally wouldn't have a campaign just called Xi because I think the jokes would probably crop up and be kind of jarring. I'd add the word nation so now your campaign is Xiguo (Western Nation), or maybe something more colorful like Xinlung (Heart of the Dragon). But these are mine, I'd have to ask my wife if you want something more interesting.

 

[MarkB]

Having played and DMed the Living Forgotten Realms Dragon Coast adventures that features the Chou (pronounced "shoe") merchants, I'd have to say that if there's a joker in the group (or if the group happen to be in that mood) it can certainly interrupt gameplay, and result in the named faction being taken less seriously ("Okay, job done - let's get back to the Chou shop.")

 

[Huw]

"Xi" would rime with "she" in medieval Spanish and Portuguese, as well as in Maltese. Due to the Spanish and Portuguese, it would also be pronounced "she" in many South American languages.

So you could easily have a culture called Xi without any oriental influence in the campaign at all.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Are there Knights of Xi, or do they just say "Xi"?

 

[Merkuri]

I would wonder why the ref is using a chinese pronunciation but probably not voice it. If he revealed a good in-game reason, then no problems. If it is arbitrary than one could legitimately expect lots of jokes about it for a while: "my character's name is spelled 'Sam' but it's pronounced 'spud'".

This is one of the things I was worried about. The in game reason is that this was a culture that inhabited the continent long before the current populace, and it's only known of through their ancient writings (which are magic-resistant and hard to translate), artifacts, and ruins. It's very different from every culture that lives there now.

Would that be a good enough reason?

 

[Scott DeWar]

of course you can turn the game around and find out what the words for rediculous goofballs is in chinese and call the lost civilization that instead.

By the way, when is the new years? today?

 

[Merkuri]

The new year was on Thursday, I believe. It's now the year of the rabbit.

 

[Merkuri]

I voiced this name idea to one of my potential players, and as I said it out loud it struck me that it was not a good name after all. I think the bit that really turned me off was when I called them the Xi people, which came out sounding like "she-people". All of a sudden I was imagining all of the artifacts and ruins of this culture as being female.

So, back to the drawing board! Anyone have another idea for a culture name that's short (preferably one syllable), easy to say, yet completely foreign sounding?

 

[NewJeffCT]

I voiced this name idea to one of my potential players, and as I said it out loud it struck me that it was not a good name after all. I think the bit that really turned me off was when I called them the Xi people, which came out sounding like "she-people". All of a sudden I was imagining all of the artifacts and ruins of this culture as being female.

So, back to the drawing board! Anyone have another idea for a culture name that's short (preferably one syllable), easy to say, yet completely foreign sounding?

In sticking with the Chinese/Mandarin theme:
Zhu (translates as "pig", pronounced "Jew"... well, umm, I guess "Jew People" might be worse than "she people")
Xu (pronounced "Shoe"... Shoe People might be bad, too)
Bei (translates as "North" and is pronounced "Bay", like Beijing, which literally means North Capitol. OK, Bei people is okay)
Nan (translates as "South" and is pronounced "nahn", like Nanjing, which means South Capitol...)
Zhou (pronounced "Joe"), which ends a lot of city names in China, like Suzhou, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, etc.
Xiong (translates as "bear", pronounced like the French name Jean... like Jean Luc Picard)
wang... ok, we won't go there
Hu... yeah, "Hu's on first?"... that won't work.
Ao... pronounced "Ow"