I was watching the Japanese version of Sailor Moon with English subtitles when I noticed that every time they say “Sailor Moon” it comes out “[Japanese word for sailor] Moonu”. There’s also [Sailor] Mercury, [Sailor] Mars ect. Now I’m pretty sure there’s Japanese words for the moon and the planets, so why did they do this?
Because English is cool. You get random English words tossed into animé for no reason at all, and sometimes German and French words, too.
Incidently, the Japanese word for moon is tsuki, and a common way of making a girl’s name is to add -no to the end of it, but no is also a possessive – it indicates belonging. The Japanese don’t see a man in the moon, they see a rabbit, and the Japanese word for rabbit is usagi.
So Sailor Moon’s name in Japanese (Tsukino Usagi), is a pun on “Moon’s Rabbit.”
Except now that I write that, I’m confused about the name order, which is family-name-first in Japanese (is it Usagi Tsukino? Then the pun would only appear if her name was reversed).
Names ending in ‘-no’ tend to be family names, not personal names. She is Tsukino (family name) Usagi (Personal name) - the rest of it is accurate, though.
The common girl’s name suffix is ‘-ko’ (child).
Oh, okay. My source for that factoid was an animé, not a linguistics text, so I shouldn’t have trusted it 
As for why Moon uses the English name and the others use Japanese, it’s probably because “moon” is an English word that pretty much everyone in Japan has heard and knows the meaning of, including kids. The English names of the other planets aren’t as well known, and probably wouldn’t have as much impact.
Actually, it comes out “sailor moon”, the whole name’s in English. For the reasons mentionned above.
BTW, “no” in Tsukino is: a) completely unrelated to the possessive particle “no”. b) means “field” so her name literally means “moon field”. It’s the same “no” as in Nagano and Ueno.
Several English-translated manga give her the nickname “Bunny”.
And look at her hairdo! Big, long ponytails, like long floppy rabbit’s ears. No co-incidence.
Actually, they all use the English names for the planets, I think there’s only a few obscure characters in the manga that have any Japanese in their ‘superhero/sailor’ names.
Most of them also follow the puns in name theme… “Hino” Rei has fire powers, and “Mizuno” Ami has water powers, and “Kino” Makoto has, uh, well she has one tree attack, I guess… and of course “Aino” Minako has weird love-y attacks.
There’s also a set of characters named (Sailor) “StarFighter” and “StarMaker” and “StarHealer,” one of which has the disturbing English attack of “Star Gentle Uterus!” And people say fan-Japanese is bad.
*Gotta get in tune with Sailor Moon
'Cause that cartoon has got the BOOM anime babes
That make me think the wrong thing*
Sailor Moon is SO HOT!
:dubious:
“In the name of the Moon, I’ll punish you,”
Oh yes, I’ve been so bad. Please punish me Miss Moon. 
:o :eek:
Talk about puns on top of puns! In the Live Action version there’s about 40 different rabbits located in Usagi’s room. There’s even a stuffed rabbit hanging form her purse!
I’ve never watched “Sailor Moon”, but when my junior high students talk about which character is/was their favorite they always seem to refer to them by the colors of their uniforms. Are they described in this way on the show?