this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2025
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chapotraphouse
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Liu Cixin clearly has some hangups about women. Twice in the Three Body series, the planet gets doomed by a woman acting too emotional. UN mandated dream wife is just the cringe icing on the cake.
Her name Cheng Xin is literally a homophone for 'sincerity' and has the character ๅฟ meaning heart. Contrasted to Luo Ji whose name ็ฝ่พ is a homophone for 'logic'. It's ๐คฎ Rowling level nominative determisism
oh damn the linguistic divide may have done that novel some favors. I probably wouldn't have been so enamored with the high-concept scifi if I knew it was being presented by Mr. Rational and his doe-eyed assistant.
I thought the translator's notes included the explanation of some of the names? Also Sophon is ๆบๅญ zhizi meaning 'knowledgeable child' (knowledge particle) can also be read as Tomoko or Satoko, a standard Japanese name.
The names do sound okay because the common surnames ็ฝ luo and ็จ cheng replace ้ป luo and ่ฏ cheng from the nouns
i may not have been the most attentive when it came to the notes
Neither am I so I'm not confident if I picked this up from t/n or from elsewhere, all g!
the whole third book is episode after episode of the MC having emotions and making the wrong decision, and then it's contrasted with the american action dude that would have made the tough but correct decision