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Question about a character's name
Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 9:34 am
by jack1974
One of my editors pointed out something, I'm not sure if I should change this or not, so I'm asking some opinions. In this game, the father of the three sisters is called "Sambo". My editor wrote:
Now I'm wondering, considering the character in game is white, and is a fantasy game, I should still change it? It's not a big deal at all, but I kind of liked the name
Re: Question about a character's name
Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 9:38 am
by Anima_
You probably should.
Re: Question about a character's name
Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 9:51 am
by jack1974
Yeah is just a search & replace anyway
Re: Question about a character's name
Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 10:46 am
by Thee Forsaken One
Personally I wouldn't bother. If you go searching for offensive terms for names in every country then you'll drive yourself mad. That one in particular is pretty archaic for a racist term, not to mention it is also a Russian martial art (Funnily enough the first result returned in Google is the martial art).
Re: Question about a character's name
Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 12:31 pm
by fabulaparva
Switch the 'b' to 'p' => Sampo and you'll have a Finnish mythological reference =>
Sampo :D
Re: Question about a character's name
Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 12:44 pm
by jack1974
Haha could do that indeed!
Even if in the game he is just a normal NPC, not a hero or powerful mage
Re: Question about a character's name
Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 9:48 pm
by iWeasle
Yeah, better safe than sorry, there are a lot of people in America who want to get upset, so if something is particularly easy for them to get upset about, it's sometimes best to just avoid it if it doesn't really matter.
Re: Question about a character's name
Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 9:55 pm
by Mad_Scientist
I'd definitely change it, there's too much bad stuff associated with that term. Especially in the US, you'd be risking hurting/offending a lot of people if you kept that name.
Re: Question about a character's name
Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 10:21 pm
by jack1974
Cool, no problems, will change it
Re: Question about a character's name
Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 10:22 pm
by thesleepykitten
Change it - even if it's an old word, it's still commonly known in the States (and other places too but I'm only familiar with a NA PoV...). Also it's not too difficult to Google names - I mean one of the first results you see is "Sambo (racial term)" from Wikipedia. It's probably best to avoid names that still have strong associations with it. ^^;
Edit - oh you just responded XD but yay!