#“Re” is an alternate form of “Ra” but I'm not going to get into that now

[miirshroom]

Elden Ring, Dark Souls, and the Sun God

Dissecting the names of FromSoft characters and locations for amusing results. "Ra" is an Egyptian god of the sun, and the use of this two letter word string shows up in some interesting contexts in FromSoftware's naming conventions. Heavy use of Wikipedia and Wiktionary.

Radagon = Ra Dagon

Dagon was a Syrian god of prosperity worshiped at the middle Euphrates who is sometimes incorrectly identified as a god of grain/agriculture (i.e. is actually grain AND a lot more). Dagon is also a name co-opted by Lovecraft for the fish deity in 'Shadow over Innsmouth'. It is thus implied that "Radagon" is a syncretization of Ra and Dagon, similar to how Ra was syncretized with Horus as Ra-Horakhty or with Amun as Amun-Ra during certain periods of history in Egypt.

Radahn = Ra Dahn (Ra, ruler of the world)

Dahn is an English form of the Scottish name "Domhnall" meaning Ruler of the World. There is an NPC in Dark Souls named 'Domhnall of Zena'.

Ranni = Ra nni = Rán Ni

Incredibly, there is at least one use of "nni" as an alternate spelling of a Sicilian word meaning "us" for the overall phrase "Ra us" (or with better grammar "We are Ra"). Which makes sense in context since Ranni's Age of Stars is about becoming a star and the sun is a star. Rán is Norse goddess of the sea, who catches men in her net and drowns them (and once loaned her net to Loki - who took credit for inventing the net). "Ni" can mean many things - in Welsh alone it means both "us/we" AND "not". In German/Norse it also means "not". "Ni" means "two" or "towards" in Japanese and "two" in Atong Indian. As a sum total, a name expressing a lot of duality.

In the languages of Malaysia and New Guinea "ni" means "water". It is also an abbreviation for elemental Nickel.

Raya Lucaria = Ra Ya Lucaria (Festival of the Grove in affirmation of Ra)

This one has layers. There's the interpretation above where "Lucaria" is a straightforward term borrowed from a Roman festival and "ya" or "ja" is a common word for "yes" in multiple languages. It is not farfetched to think that the institution originally had closer ties to the sun than the moon - there is a sun motif in the Debate Parlour, on elevators, and on the Telescope item. The Japanese Kanji blur together the words "Raya Lucaria" such that レアル` includes Rayalu and is pronounced more like "real". Despite there being kanji available for the "ya" sound.

One meaning of や (ya) is a specific nuance of "and", as in "the Academy of Ra and the Festival of the Grove, among other things". Another is the hiragana spelling of 矢, which can mean "arrow" or "wedge used to break hard objects such as wood or stone" - causing Raya to mean "Ra's arrow" or "Ra's axe/chisel", perhaps. Additional hiragana uses include 屋 (house), 八 (eight), and 輻 (spoke of a wheel), which has a great synergy with something I have been working with for a while. This being that Radagon's time at Raya Lucaria began during the eighth house of a zodiac wheel that describes the history of the Lands Between. Likely Scorpio, if the start point is considered to be Aries, although it could also be Leo from a start point of Capricorn (more on that in further names to follow).

Siofra = Siof Ra (Sheep Ra)

Acknowledging that that "síofra" is also an entire word meaning "changeling", "elf", or "weakling" in Irish, "siöf" is a word meaning "sheep" in the nearly extinct Germanic language of Vilamovian.

Yura = Yu Ra

"you Ra" is funny, but not very helpful. However, Yu the Great was a Chinese sage-king (more of a mythical figure) known for a great feat of flood control somewhere around 3000-2000 BCE

Eleonora = Ele Ono Ra

"Ele" means "firewood" in Abure - a language native to the Ivory Coast. In Finnish it means "gesture" or "sign". It is "eel" in Middle English and "oil" in Old English, and "she" or "wing" in Old French. Also has some associations with "hand" or "foreign person" or "country" in Turkish.

"Ono" is Czech for "id" of psychoanalysis (so called "the impulsive (and unconscious) part of [a] psyche that responds directly and immediately to basic urges, needs, and desires"). And in Japanese can mean "ax" or a pronoun for "oneself", or as a name means "small field". It is also proto-polynesian for the number 6.

So "Ele Ono Ra" is the "female sign of the unconscious desires of Ra" and also has connotations of firewood doused in oil.

Another potential reading is "E Leo No Ra". "E" is a very flexible sound that variously means "and", "the", "of", etc. It is the 5th letter of the Latin alphabet as "Leo" would be the 5th sign of a zodiac beginning with Aries. The full phrase might be "And Leo (5th sign of zodiac) not of the sun". Which - taken in combination with the use of "6" (matching 6th zodiac sign of Virgo) in the first interpretation - this gets into the really complicated thing where the wheel of Vedic astrology based on the position of the moon lags behind Western (i.e. Greek) astrology.

Zorayas = Zo Ra Yas

There are many ways to break up this name - but for simplicity I focus on the "Ra" version. "Zo" is a language spoken in Myanmar and India, but also the prefix "zo-" generally means "of or relating to animals" (derived from Greek). The most likely meaning of "Yas" in context is the Turkish "mourning" which was derived from proto-Turkish "damage, loss; shame". Therefore an overall meaning something like "animal of Ra's mourning".

In the Aleut (Alaskan area) language "Yas" can mean "reef of rocks at or near surface", and in Navajo it is a word for wet snow.

There are notable uses of "Ra" as a suffix showing up in Dark Souls. It is a game with the catchphrase "Praise the sun", afterall.

[DS1 & DS3] Astora = Asto Ra (Assisting Ra)

"Asto" is Latin and means "assist" or "assisting". Notable characters from Astora: Blacksmith Andre, Solaire, Fire keeper Anastacia, Knight Oscar, Undead Prince Ricard, Anri of Astora. All appear in DS1 except Anri who appears in DS3.

Anri is an anagram of "Rani" which is rather similar to "Ranni" and yet as demonstrated above there would be a significant difference between the declarative "Rán, i", and the more "yes, but also no" nature of "Rán ni".

[DS3] Shira = Shi Ra (Temporarily channeling the spirit of the deceased Ra)

"Shi" has meanings associated with death in both Chinese and Japanese. The Chinese version of "shi" is a "ceremonial 'personator' who represented a dead relative during ancient Chinese ancestral sacrifices". These are ceremonies with food and drink where the living worship the dead and the dead bless the living. On the other hand, there are a lot of Chinese kanji that are pronounced with "shi" with different inflections - could be that any of those is relevant.

[DS2] Nashandra = Nash and Ra (By the Ash Tree and Ra)

Could be a play on words here of "Ashen" tree, considering that the player character of the following game (DS3) is called "Ashen One".

[DS1] Capra = Cap Ra

"Cap" is an abbreviation derived from "captain". It is also the abbreviation of "Capricorn" - which is the chronological start of the zodiac theme used in most of FromSoft worldbuilding, as indicated in Armored Core V. The Capra demon is a humanoid with a bull head, which resembles Mnevis, the black bull god who was worshiped in Heliopolis and later assimilated as the "personality of Ra".

[DS1] Ciaran = Cía Rán = Ciar An

It's a Ra adjacent name. The meaning of "Cía Rán" would be something like "who is Rán?", where "cía" is from Old Irish. "Ciar" is a Spanish word meaning "to reverse the direction (of a boat)". "An" has entirely too many meanings, though a common one in French and other languages is "year". Which makes sense in the context that this this character is associated with the Artorius DLC about travelling to the past and the whole Souls series of games is about the Argo Navis sailing in search of the Golden Fleece (the story tied to zodiac Aries).