(Edited from a Twitter rant in nine parts.)
I’ve complained about Shampoo’s name and how fanfic writers tend to write her “original Chinese name” often enough. I’d like to discuss Cologne and Mousse this time.
Now then. Knowing that Shampoo is the only one of the three with a name in actual Chinese characters, Cologne and Mousse are only ever written in katakana: コロン and ムース. Koron and Mūsu. Simple, right? That’s basically exactly how the products would be pronounced, just like with Shampoo.
Problem #1: Cologne’s fandom name is usually written as Khu Lon. Sometimes I think without the H. First of all, I can find no romanization scheme where khu is a valid sound, written that way. There’s khu but that’s in a scheme that’s not even used, and kuh isn’t quite it either. Second, it seems to me to be simply the wrong sound. The vowel is all wrong!
Problem #2: Mousse is usually given the name Mu Tsu, Mu Tse, and in this one doorstopper I’m slogging through, Mse Tsu. I already covered how absurdly wrong that third one is. If these were at all right, wouldn’t his name be written ムーツ, mūtsu? But it’s not. There is no T sound in either his established katakana writing or in his name as spoken.
Shampoo’s name, as covered before, is shanpū in Japanese, with a lengthened -u. It’s shānpū in Chinese, where I believe the accent marks denote tone? Correct me on that if I’m wrong. So at worst the length of the -u is different. Likewise, Ranma’s name “translates” to Chinese as luanma. Exactly the same kanji (乱馬) and all that. Readings are cool like that. Between the well-known L/R difficulty and an easily drowned out u, that’s also basically the same when pronounced.
Why then, in the name of logic, should Cologne and Mousse have their names so different? At least back when they started, fanfic authors had no way to look this shit up — there was no Wiktionary or such back then. You really have no excuse now. You can do better than this. If you were to tell me “but those are their names”, you basically admit to being both uninformed and being too lazy. “That’s how we’ve always called it in the fandom” is arguably better, but again you can do better.
Since we can look shit up, let’s actually do look this shit up! What is “eau de cologne” in Mandarin Chinese? It’s 科隆香水, kēlóng xiāngshuǐ. “Mousse” as in the hair product? That’s 摩絲, mósī.
Shānpū, Kēlóng, Mósī. Research over.
But wait. Kēlóng? Ke? Didn’t I say earlier that the vowel is all wrong? I did. It’s a romanization difference. The zhuyin is ㄎㄜ. I gave their names just now in hanyu pinyin. In Wade-Giles, it’s written with an o. Simple. Mousse’s ㄇㄛ is mo in both.
Just for fun, I thought I’d look up some common fanmazon names, but reconsidered when I found Chinese has a perfectly good word for perfume. Oh well, I’d made my point already 🤷♀️