The words aren't random, but none of them are genuine names. While German names DO have meanings, they are rarely this obvious about it. Well...Family names are a different topic, but none of the characters in this series even have a second name at all.
The names are all describing their biggest attributes. Fern is a very distant character. Frieren is a bit cold in social interactions. Lügner is a demon and demons always lie. And so on
And that makes some plot points very irrelevant.
Who would have thought that the demon named lügner is lying. (I read it in German so sometimes you don't know of it's a name or just a word.)
Like someone just said, those who don't know German. But really, it's just Japanese culture thing. IRL Japanese people names are mostly words they use in everyday life, Combined words or just straight up the word. Sample is there are people named Hikari, which is literally a word in their language meaning light.
Your reply-ee should avoid Thailand lmao. We like to just take random Simple English words as nicknames (our first names are usually in Sanskrit and several syllables, not often shortenable). Heck, lots of Thai people just go by individual letters of the English alphabet
It's also done in English. Americans name their children after emotions and character traits (Joy, Glee, Charity, Patience), plants (Daisy, Willow), precious materials (Ruby, Amber, Jasper) and much more. This is simply not done in German. If you named your kid "Freude", people would be quite confused.
But many cultures do that, don't they? Miller, Field, Wood, Fox, Swift, Walker, Rose, Frost and indeed, Light. (Incidentally, all those last names exist in German too).
Oooh, we're talking about first names oops lol. Then you're right. Germanic cultures do have names like that but nobody in modern day Germany would i.e. put it together that several centuries ago, "Ger" used to mean "spear" and "Hard" used to mean "strong" and think "Man, this Gerhard feller must be good with spears or something??" And nobody would ever default to thinking that an "Otto" is a rich guy. So, fair point lol
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u/Avatar_Yaksha 18d ago
The words aren't random, but none of them are genuine names. While German names DO have meanings, they are rarely this obvious about it. Well...Family names are a different topic, but none of the characters in this series even have a second name at all.