Journal Entry
Hongguo ship names
August 30th 2007 at 8:20 am
In a piece of reader mail today:
I’m curious about your names for the Hongguo and their ships. I’m studying Mandarin right now, and my girlfriend is from Beijing. For “Hongguo,” among others, that could mean “Red Government” to “Magnificent Empire.” Chinese is a language of homonyms, and trying to figure out the names of the ships (Hao) is like doing a cross word puzzle. I asked my girlfriend for input, but she said without the written characters, I can pretty much just pick from the dictionary list. Did you contact a Chinese speaker for help, or use a translation software?
Hongguo is ‘Magnificent Empire,’ often used by the Chinese to refer to their empire at times. The Hongguo of Ragamuffin are a polyglot of Japanese and Chinese influences, my assumption being that both Chinese and Japanese space travel in the near future would put them in influential positions and be among the first to be engaged in human/alien contact and that outsider aliens (much like Westerners can) would just treat them as the same group. What becomes the Hongguo in the book were able to negotiate a better position initially with the aliens than others (in my imaginary backstory). So I mix both cultures into them, with Japanese and Chinese stuff all mashed together (on purpose, not out of ignorance!)
The ship names are mostly Chinese (although Etsudo, more Japanese, his ship name you can find out more about here: http://www.pantheon.org/articles/t/takara-bune.html). If I wanted to play with Hongguo politics even further, illustrating the tensions between these disparate cultural elements and showing they still exist would be lots of fun, but there are only so many pages and you have to just let some things drop. I didn’t want Etsudo taking over the story too much more.
My files are buried, but I know the Shengfen Hao takes Shengfen (Victorious Wind, a cool ship name) and Hao, which I read somewhere is Chinese naval mark designation, similar to the English S.S. IE, I’m told that the USS Enterprise is the Qiye Hao in Mandarin.
I could be way wrong about the naval designation, but those are from my research notes a few years ago.
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1. Mark Terry on Aug 30th, 2007 at 8:55 am
That’s pretty cool. I remember thinking somewhere while reading Ragamuffin that one of the ships had a name that meant something in some other language. I don’t remember specifically what it was, but it matched up with some other bit of trivia floating in my head concerning various Asian languages and I thought, “Huh, that’s cool.”
2. Josh on Aug 30th, 2007 at 10:21 am
This is cool to know. Info like this would make for a good “Director’s Cut” Edition of Buckellcast!
3. Pablo Defendini on Aug 30th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
I second Josh’s ‘Director’s Cut’ idea. When I read both Crystal Rain and (particularly) Ragamuffin, I got the distinct feeling of there being layers of information about your universe hiding deep under the actual text, and I enjoy that feeling immensely. I’m sure a lot of this is simply comprehensive world-building on your end, in order to better write the novel, but I’m one of those guys that loves to read or find out about the details that inform what actually makes it onto the page. It makes for a deeper and richer immersion into the world depicted.
4. Mark Terry on Aug 30th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
…and in 20 years you can published the “Ragarillion” and it will be so esoteric and incomprehensible nobody alive will understand it, but you’ll be so famous everybody will buy it anyways. Then literature professors can force feed it down the throats of their students.
First ya gotta start with a creation story…
5. Chris Wojciechowski on Aug 30th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
This is random, but… cool moment of the day: Going to Science Fiction Book Club and seeing Crystal Rain a “recommended” book on the front page when I logged in. I was like “*GLEE* I KNOW HIM!”
Yep.
6. Hugh on Aug 30th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
Thanks, Toby. I find this bit of extra backstory helpful, as I am currently about one third of way through Ragamuffin (beginning of Ch. 14, to be exact). I thoroughly enjoyed Crystal Rain, and am just now starting to see the connection between the two novels.
7. Steve Buchheit on Aug 30th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
“Ragarillion!” That’s classic, Mark.
8. Steve Buchheit on Aug 30th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Of course, then Tobias would need to have a son who could then make a living out of pilfering through his father’s notes.
9. Hugh on Aug 30th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Of course, then Tobias would need to have a son who could then make a living out of pilfering through his father’s notes.
Maybe his son could hook up with Kevin Anderson’s. They could do a whole series of prequels to Crystal Rain.
10. Mark Terry on Aug 31st, 2007 at 9:19 am
Ragamuffin Messiah
Ragamuffin Prophecy
Children of the Raga
Grandchildren of the Raga
Raga Children of the Raga
Dune Ragamuffin
RagaRaga Rah Rah! (The XXX version!)
11. tobias buckell on Aug 31st, 2007 at 9:29 am
You guys are cracking me up…