unspoken

((redo bc im dumb pls ignore the first one)) 01 for any kid of your choice! or 30 for Tanith!

01. What does your character’s name mean? Did you pick it for the symbolism, or did you just like the way it sounded?

I had trouble choosing for this number, so I asked my discord friends for suggestions and got the SoulSilver and Achromic kids!

Renato's name information can be found in his profile, so I'll just do Celeste here. I chose her name since it's a type of musical instrument, matching Lyra's name! The instrument is more commonly known as a celesta or a bell-piano and is sort of like a small piano. One of the most well-known pieces of music played on a celesta is "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from The Nutcracker! When going through musical names, Celeste stood out to me as being cute and suiting what I had in mind for her character, plus it has the added bonus of being a sky-themed name as well (like celestial), which suits Lyra's Flying-type specialization as a gym leader during the next gen.

As for her family's surname, I picked Campanella to match Lyra's maiden name, Suzuki! Suzuki is written as "bell tree" and Campanella means, literally, "little bell", but is also a type of flower, so both names relate to the two towers in Ecruteak as well as plants.

Now for Hilda and Aubin's twins. These two have gone through quite a few variations, but their current names reflect something I think each parent would pick. Bertie's full name, Bertram, means "bright raven", which in a roundabout way fits the region's "black & white" theme. It's also close to Hilbert's name (both "bert"s meaning "bright") so I like the idea of Hilda naming her son after her brother, especially due to some stuff that happens to Hilbert after BW that I'll get into more in a later post (at some point). Maela is the feminine form of Mael, a traditional Breton name that means "prince, lord". My version of Unova has some Breton influence, so while for the modern era that usually only manifests in surnames (Morvan, Marec, Herve, etc) rather than given names (same as regions like Kanto having a lot of English given names and Japanese surnames, for example), Aubin is originally from medieval times so a more traditional name made more sense as something he'd pick. Mael(a) might even have been the name of a relative he admired.

Speaking of surnames, the protag family's has also gone through a few changes, but the current one, Morvan, derives from the historical figure (also spelled Morman or Morwan) who was a king of Brittany, alluding to how this family is descended from the Harmonia royal line. I've found a few different etymologies listed for the name, though the most agreed upon one seems to be "great power/might" (other possibilities relate the "Mor-" part to mean "sea" and the "-man/van" part to mean "to think" or "mind, reasoning", so the name could also mean "sea power" or "great mind".)

30. When it comes to the arts (music, film, theater, etc), what does your character like?

Tanith really likes upbeat pop and rock music! Especially 80s/90s stuff - think workout music. Anything that gets her energized. As for film, she enjoys a fairly wide range of genres, though her favorites are cheesy mindless romcoms and cheesy over-the-top slasher (or other horror) films. Basically, stuff that you can enjoy with a big tub of popcorn at a sleepover. She doesn't really like watching movies by herself and enjoys having friends to react with. She also loves musicals! Otherwise, as a coordinator, she often watches recordings of famous past coordinators to get an idea of what made them stand out.