What were they thinking, part #71: The Grandis Gang.
I've been rewatching Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water again, and I'm struck by how good it is. The characters are clear, and the settings change all the time, and the music is interesting and different between episodes. Definitely worth a rewatch if you haven't seen it for a while.
But what I wanted to get to was the linguistic part: What the heck kind of name is Grandis Granva? Her gang members are easy enough: Sanson is an allusion to the biblical Samson, which they tell you on-screen, and he messes with his hair constantly. Hanson is actually a pun on Sanson, where "san" means two" and "han" means "half" -- he's a short guy. But these are both Western names.
Grandis Granva on the other hand is a little odd. According to supplementals, she's an Italian aristocrat that fell on hard times. So why are they calling her "señorita", not "signorina"? Most likely, "Grandva" is actually "Grandval" or "Granval", depending on whether it's a French or Spanish or Italian name, for "grand valley". That "d" isn't pronounced anyway, and I could see "valle" being shortened to "val" (as in standard French). And then I found a Wikipedia page for a composer who was Vitcomesse de Grandval, which if you click over to the French page you can see she had two daughters, one of whom died and the other Thérèse is a few years older than Grandis. Hmmm.
"Grandis" is much easier. It's just Latin for grown-up/grand. Or a verb form of "grow up" in French, which is a strike against her origin being French -- verbs tend to not be used as names. There's also a tiny village of Grandval in Switzerland, where Saint Randoald of Grandval was a monk. Of course, being from a village family in Switzerland is not a problem for being an aristocrat -- look at the von Habsburgs. And the Río Gran Valira in Andorra is interesting too.
I've been rewatching Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water again, and I'm struck by how good it is. The characters are clear, and the settings change all the time, and the music is interesting and different between episodes. Definitely worth a rewatch if you haven't seen it for a while.
But what I wanted to get to was the linguistic part: What the heck kind of name is Grandis Granva? Her gang members are easy enough: Sanson is an allusion to the biblical Samson, which they tell you on-screen, and he messes with his hair constantly. Hanson is actually a pun on Sanson, where "san" means two" and "han" means "half" -- he's a short guy. But these are both Western names.
Grandis Granva on the other hand is a little odd. According to supplementals, she's an Italian aristocrat that fell on hard times. So why are they calling her "señorita", not "signorina"? Most likely, "Grandva" is actually "Grandval" or "Granval", depending on whether it's a French or Spanish or Italian name, for "grand valley". That "d" isn't pronounced anyway, and I could see "valle" being shortened to "val" (as in standard French). And then I found a Wikipedia page for a composer who was Vitcomesse de Grandval, which if you click over to the French page you can see she had two daughters, one of whom died and the other Thérèse is a few years older than Grandis. Hmmm.
"Grandis" is much easier. It's just Latin for grown-up/grand. Or a verb form of "grow up" in French, which is a strike against her origin being French -- verbs tend to not be used as names. There's also a tiny village of Grandval in Switzerland, where Saint Randoald of Grandval was a monk. Of course, being from a village family in Switzerland is not a problem for being an aristocrat -- look at the von Habsburgs. And the Río Gran Valira in Andorra is interesting too.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto