Code Geass Titles

[Complex Mind]

Code Geass Titles

What does the 'vi, di, etc..' mean in Code Geass' Royal Family Character Names?

i.e. Lelouch vi Britannia

Could it be Latin? I can't find the answer anywhere...

 

[Skr]

It's not Latin... it's probably Italian though.

Take Leonardo da Vinci or Martin van Buren... same middle part. When we see those, though, we think of it as just part of their last name... which doesn't really work in the Geass names :<

Edit: Looking up more things, things like da Vinci and van Buren are just 'surname prefixes'... I'm sure that's what they were going after in Geass... but why they change from person to person I have no clue... I guess they might actually have a meaning... like vi or something can mean "blank of" so then it would be "Name - Blank of Britannia" Seems to be something used in Dutch a lot... but Geass isn't from Dutch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tussenvoegsel

Edit2: Aha! I found more:

Italy has around 350,000 surnames. Most of them derive from the following sources: patronym or ilk (e.g. Francesco Di Marco, "Francis, son of Mark" or Eduardo De Filippo, "Edward belonging to the family of Philip"), occupation (e.g. Enzo Ferrari, "Enzo the Smiths"), personal characteristic (e.g. nicknames or pet names like Dario Forte, "Darius the Strong"), geographic origin (e.g. Elisabetta Romano, "Elisabeth from Rome") and objects (e.g. Carlo Sacchi, "Charles Bags"). The two most common Italian family names, Russo and Rossi, mean the same thing, "Red", possibly referring to a hair color that would have been very distinctive in Italy.

I'm guessing you probably already knew they meant something, but hey, we know know 'di' means "son of"... and 'de' is 'of the'... further reading here

 

[Futamaru]

Could be a surname prefix that the author made up so that it doesn't refer to any country.

But I searched the wiktionary and found that it means "descendant" in Ewe. (Don't know what language Ewe is)

 

[Skr]

Could be a surname prefix that the author made up so that it doesn't refer to any country.

Lawl, their country's name is 'Britannia'... That's as close to a reference as you can get without it being the same word :<

 

[Futamaru]

But geographically in America... xD

 

[megumi]

I think it also indirectly denotes which mother one was born to. Like Lelouch and Nunally both have "vi" while both Cornelia and what'shername (I seriously forgot) has same as well.

 

[Popcorn42]

Euphemia?

 

[megumi]

Yeah. Her. x_x

 

[Complex Mind]

I guess it must be Latin-based then, I know for a fact that a number of languages use such titles in their names (in varying forms).

Complex Mind de la Chine!

 

[Skr]

It's not from Latin... Latin had no such things. Italian.

Latin names are like Gaius Julius Caesar or Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus.... simple setup like that... unless it seriously come from things such as "Marcus Aurelius Lucii f. Quinti n. tribu Galeria Antoninus Felix, domo Caesaraugusta" which is almost giving your life story in a name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_conventions