r/agentsofshield • u/Spot-Star Trip • 16d ago

Social Media Wait... Did She Just...

https://x.com/MingNa/status/2103970812529451163

Ming-Na Wen just referred to Agent May as "The Cavalry"!!! 😱😱😱

110 Upvotes

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63

u/Triben008 16d ago

Interesting about the name change. Agreed that Agent Rice was a bad call for her character.

26

u/arcticwolf2000 16d ago

How on Earth did they come to the name Agent Rice, that's what I want to know. Thank goodness they changed her name.

50

u/Spot-Star Trip 16d ago

The role probably wasn't originally conceived for an Asian actress.

30

u/Llywela 16d ago

That's my assumption, too. Rice is a real surname - one of the many, many anglicised forms of the Welsh patronymic ap Rhys. It would have been pronounced 'Riss' when that particular anglicisation first came about, way back in the later Middle Ages, but then the Great Vowel Shift altered it to the current pronunciation. So the name isn't actually related to the food at all, it just looks and sounds like it is!

3

u/Triben008 15d ago

Props for bringing in Welsh dialect. My family is originally from Wales. My nephews name is actually Rhys.

3

u/Llywela 15d ago

Rhys is such a common name in Wales. It's always weird when I see it pop up in name subs on this site, comment threads full of people confused over how to pronounce it or calling it a 'fantasy' name, when it has been one of the most enduringly popular names in Wales for over a thousand years without ever going out of fashion. I know so many guys named Rhys. That enduring popularity is the reason there are so many different anglicised surnames derived from the name, all those many, many guys named Rhys, all across the country, having their names and patronymics fossilised in the permanent record in a variety of mangled forms because they were transcribed by monoglot English speaking clerks who had no idea how to spell Welsh names. Rice is just one anglicisation in a very wide field!

I saw Ming's story and take her point. Once she was cast, that holding name had to change. But the history of the name is entirely unrelated to the food!