"Knull is Coming" - Marvel missing the fact that fantasy names can be words in other languages

To some extent, there are simply a finite number of short words. There are inevitably going to be collisions between different languages.

I am reminded of the Greek expletive μαλάκας, most often used as μαλάκα. This sounds exactly like Malacca, which, of course, causes considerable problems for discussing topics involving Southeast Asia. In fact, in many places, Μαλάκα is the transliteration of the Malacca in the Straight of Malacca and elsewhere.

In writing, this led to the somewhat unusual Μαλάκκα, the double-κ presumably existing to distinguish the word in written works, and to the peculiar tendency observed when Greek news discussed the disappearance of MH 370 to deliberately mispronounce the word by putting the stress (modern Greek has semantically-important accents) on the first syllable, saying Μάλακα, despite this not being in any dictionary or atlas, because it avoided the conflict.

I'm usually surprised with names, in general, when it's clear that the author didn't bother to google whether they're names in other cultures. Back in the day when you had to go to a library to find stuff like this it makes sense, but when we have Google and an English to [any language with a written script and more than 100 fluent speakers with access to the Internet] dictionary at our fingertips what is stopping people?

This happens constantly in fantasy. There are so many Farsi and Sanskrit names for fantasy characters that the authors don't find out about until after publication when an Indian or Persian fan points it out to them. I think it's especially the case there because English, Sanskrit, and Farsi are all Indo-European, so there are a lot of shared phonemes and linguistic roots along with a general sense for how words are supposed to sound, what sounds pleasant vs harsh, etc. This is in contrast to languages that have completely alien sounds to English speakers (like !X) or tonal languages where English speakers don't even understand how they work.

So while the cultures are foreign enough that their words sound pretty alien to an English speaker, we still have similar-enough ideas about what collections of sounds plausibly work as names or words that it's easy to just make stuff up that happens to already be a name. And yet neither authors nor editors seem to think it's worth it to bother plugging the names they're thinking of into a Baby Names dictionary to see what comes out. Baffling!

A fun one is Chandra from Magic the Gathering. They clearly chose it because she's a pyromancer and the word sounds vaguely like the verb "to char." But Chandra is the Hindu God of the Moon! In addition to being a masculine name he's associated with tranquility, spirituality, esoteric knowledge, and altered states of consciousness. If that name belongs anywhere on the Magic color pie, it belongs in Blue.

But someone has to establish it first, ensure its quality, and be able to sustain it for long enough for it to gain traction.

...and make it financially viable.

If and when such a system is put into place it will need to be proven that the added expense of its checks either garners greater revenues or prevents loss of revenue from boycott from the group in question. Until that's shown there's little point in doing so from the filmmaker's perspective.

The artist can just try Google Translate, it's great for words. However, as art goes, it's easy to get stuck on a name.

I typed "translate knull to English" and got it's translation and native language.

I feel bad for the Dutch who didn't stand a chance against Darth Vader, however.