December 02, 2007
Rewatching Shingu I suddenly became interested in the Japanese names for military ranks. They translate Weinul's rank as "lieutenant", but since he's navy I had been assuming he was an O-3. Actually, it turns out his rank is shoui, which means he's an O-1. They should have translated his rank as "ensign".
So I did a google search for "shoui chuui kuui" and turned up nothing but word lists. No one had a page about Japanese officer rank names. Thus:
Level | Japanese | US Army | US Navy |
O-1 | å°‘æ…° shoui | 2nd Lieutenant | Ensign |
O-2 | ä¸å°‰ chuui | 1st Lieutenant | Lieutenant junior grade |
O-3 | 空尉 kuui | Captain | Lieutenant |
O-4 | å°‘ä½ shousa | Major | Lieutenant Commander |
O-5 | ä¸ä½ chuusa | Lt. Colonel | Commander |
O-6 | ç©ºä½ kuusa | Colonel | Captain |
O-7 | 准将 junshou | Brigadier General | Rear Admiral (lower half) |
O-8 | å°‘å°† shoushou | Major General | Rear Admiral (upper half) |
O-9 | æµ·å°† kaishou | Lt. General | Vice Admiral |
O-10 | 大将 taishou | General | Admiral |
At least that's what the dictionary says. I think there's a mistake on the kanji for the first one. Symmetry suggests it really should be å°‘å°‰. æ…° means "consolation, amusement, make sport of". Clearly that isn't right.
Which gets me curious about the kanji, since the pattern is so regular. chuui is ä¸å°‰ which means "middle officer". Isn't that interesting? å°‘ means "little". 空 means "sky"; presumably implying "top".
For O-4 we have å°‘ä½ "little assistant". And then middle and big.
For O-7 we have 准将 "associate leader". O-8 is "little leader". O-9 is "sea leader". And O-10 means "big leader". Some of those obviously don't make much sense taken literally, but our rank names don't, either. (Especially the confusion about the use of "lieutenant" and "captain".)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at
11:41 PM
| Comments (9)
| Add Comment
Post contains 282 words, total size 3 kb.
æ…° means "consolation, amusement, make sport of". Clearly that isn't right.
Considering the way O-1s are thought of (in ANY military organization), 'amusement' makes perfect sense.
Posted by: Wonderduck at December 03, 2007 05:52 AM (dGuAN)
Posted by: Jim Burdo at December 03, 2007 06:21 AM (o4YY8)
Commodore was a perfectly good rank (O-7) long before it was a computer, but then the Navy decided flotillas were obsolete, and the rank designated for command of flotillas, the Commodore, vanished.
Posted by: thornharp at December 03, 2007 09:59 AM (OO+l8)
The British call O-7 "Brigadier" and "Commodore" and they're not flag ranks.
For a long time a US Navy O-7 wore two stars, even though an Army O-7 wore one. That was always really stupid, and it's been changed.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 03, 2007 10:10 AM (+rSRq)
Odd, because thinking back through most of the animé I've seen, the word I've heard most often for captain seems to be "kanchou" (phonetic spelling, no idea what the correct romanji is).
Posted by: ubu at December 03, 2007 11:11 AM (dhRpo)
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at December 03, 2007 11:28 AM (LMDdY)
As Avatar says, "kanchou" isn't a formal rank. One place you heard it was Banner of the Stars, where it was used to address Lafiel. Her actual rank in the Imperial Navy is jusshouchou. But you'll hear Jinto and Samson call her kanchou which, as noted, translates quite well as "skipper".
The difference is that it isn't quite as informal as "skipper"; using it isn't considered excessively familiar.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 03, 2007 12:30 PM (+rSRq)
Posted by: Wonderduck at December 03, 2007 03:43 PM (dGuAN)
My father tells stories of causing confusion at when he was stationed at San Diego navy base decades ago whenever he was addressed as Captain and everyone turns around and he's this young Army officer.
Posted by: Civilis at December 03, 2007 04:43 PM (VgEMC)
Enclose all spoilers in spoiler tags:
[spoiler]your spoiler here[/spoiler]
Spoilers which are not properly tagged will be ruthlessly deleted on sight.
Also, I hate unsolicited suggestions and advice. (Even when you think you're being funny.)
At Chizumatic, we take pride in being incomplete, incorrect, inconsistent, and unfair. We do all of them deliberately.
How to put links in your comment
Comments are disabled. Post is locked.21 queries taking 0.0137 seconds, 26 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.