Dougram nomenclature

I wrote Dougram in brief before Fang of the Sun Dougram (1981) was released in an authoritative translation, so I had to pick ways to render each of the names. These are my notes.

I have chosen to translate “太陽の牙” (taiyō no kiba) as the “Fang of the Sun” because it is short, it is within the range of literal readings and it seems generally accepted in English-language fandom. Since Deloyer has two suns, and the group has several members, the intended meaning is probably “the suns as jaws”, opening and closing a metaphorical maw in the sky as they go in and out of alignment with Deloyer, but this is never clarified. Both translations look equally bad to me.

In Japanese, the humanoid vehicles on the show are called “combat armour”, for no apparent reason. I’ve chosen not to use that term because the word “armour” would naturally include tanks—which also appear in combat on the show but are not ”combat armour”—and is not countable in English grammar, requiring some ill-fitting secondary noun like “suit”.

As usual with this type of production, Dougram also has a lot of non-Japanese names presented in Japanese. In fact, the only native Japanese word used for a name is Nanashi (“nameless”). Even that is only spelled phonetically. There are no traditional Japanese names and no explanations.

Some of the proper nouns are fanciful. Any alphabetic spelling of them, even on screen, should be regarded with suspicion. At worst, they are made up for a monolingual Japanese audience by a monolingual Japanese editor or background artist with minimal insight and concern, so I haven’t looked for official Japanese publications that may suggest an official spelling. My choices are summarized here, followed by any credible alternatives that occurred to me or that I’ve seen floating around in fandom. As you can see, I’m not following any particular scheme, nor is this list complete. I have excluded a lot of minor characters, place names and mecha. I’m open to criticism.