I fear more work coming for you Dan. Promise you won't be mad? Okay, so I have looked at the documentation for the enemy names in the Néo-Midgar project and I am going to report what could be interesting for us (and sometimes give my opinion too). There's most likely a lot that you already know or even that was found by yourselves in the first place ( I've omitted what I knew was from you or known by you ) so of course feel free to ignore those parts or anything that you'd judge not fitting. But some things I find interesting and even relevant.
- Acrofies: "Acro" comes from Acropora, we already know that, but the end of the name could come from the end of the word "Calliophis", an genus of snakes (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calliophis) which is part of a species called oriental coral snakes (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_snake).
Be it the real source or not, the suffix "-ophis" ("ὄφις") means "serpent" in Old Greek (the ethymology is documented on the French page of the wiki (
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calliophis) but not on the English one). The enemy being a serpent combined with a piece of coral, Acro + ophis --> "Acrophis" seems to be the most faithful spelling.
- Bagnadrana: Okay, for this one they have decomposed the word as follow: "Bug" (as a bug, but more in the sense of a computer bug), "na" (negation), "dra" (beginning of the word "dragon"), "na" (negation). That gives us "Not a bug nor a dragon", and maybe a fusion of both. The enemy looks like a dragon with six legs, as bugs have. And in Costa del Sol, the lady at the tourist board tells us about strange dragons living on Mount Corel, and at Mount Corel there is no creatures looking like strange dragons other than these. So they went for "Bugnadrana". They also say that "Bug" is more likely than "Bag" in that word in Japanese.
- Live Wire: Here they start by stating that the first word is "Kappa" (not "Kyappa"). They believe that "Kappa" is the fusion of "capa", like in "capacity" in electronics, and "kappa", the Greek letter for our K (the enemy has the shape of a K).
They also state that in kana the word "copper" is spelt the same as "Kappa", just for one kana difference (so, "copper" with a modified letter would translate to the same kana as "Kappa"). Thus in French they went for "copper" ("cuivre") but with that letter modified (so it fits with the kana for "Kappa") which in French gives "Kuivre". In English, that would give "Kopper Wire". I believe luksy has to be summoned on that one.
- Chews Tank: Their view on this one may be very right but we may need luksy and even Kaldarasha to find out.
That first word: it is believed that the kana are the ones for "Tschüs" ! The "bybye!" of the German speakers! (pronounced 'tchooss') Basically the little seahorse has fled away from his big aquarium ("Tank") and he is now free, so ..Tschüs Tank ! xD I'm already 'convinced' by that one haha, it's just funny.
- Deanglow: Just a comment about "Dean": Dean electric guitars could be the source for the word
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Guitars The logo is the word "Dean" with wings and their slogan is "It's time to get your wings" (fits with the creature appearance).
- Goulashtrike: According to them, the beginning of the word matches the kana for the beginning of the word "grasshopper" (the sound made is 'grassh'), and the creature looks like a grasshopper. The last 4 kana give "trike", which means "tricycle" (that is already known).
The last 3 kana could also mean "-like", so we're not far from something like "grasshopper-like", just for one kana. It could also be a contraction between "grass(hopper)" and "strike".
- Grim Guard: They say the kana match with "Grimm", as in The Grimm brothers, and that it is a direct reference to them and their enchanting universe, and that there's nothing grim about that enemy.
- Gel Schmelze: Maybe Kaldarasha can help confirm this but
the word Gelschmelze is a real word
http://www.google.com/patents/DE10118101B4?cl=de (the word can be seen several times on that page) and here is the same page in English
http://www.google.com/patents/DE10118101B4?cl=en . The word defines something that can melt gelatine-type matters. The main attack of the enemy is some sort of liquid poison.
- Madhu Ju: Again, that's what they say: The kana for "mad" can be read as "mud", and then there is "ooze". Mud and ooze (so "Mudooze" for his name) fit with the fact that the enemy can be found in a cave near a swamp, and that he attacks with "Swamp Shoot" (don't know what you called that attack for The Reunion)
- Maul Dancer: They didn't go for the sense of "maul" but for the one of "Moor"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moors . Just saying in case you didn't consider this before.
- Muu: Look:
http://www.discogs.com/Secret-Squirrel-Mu-Venom-DDT/release/142190 Mu-Venom from Secret Squirrel. That one seems so obvious (which would lead to "Mu").
- Harley Quinn: That one comes from "Arlequin/ Harlequin/ Arlecchino"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlequin , a famous character in the Italian Commedia dell'arte, but that has nothing to do with FFVII.
- Leaf Suck: "sack" at the end could mean "bag". Then "bag of leaves" could be a possible meaning.
"Rilsan" could have inspired the name in some way. Rilsan is something that has the shape of the enemy
https://www.google.be/search?q=rilsan&client=ubuntu&hs=0dr&channel=fs&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CEgQsARqFQoTCOmlzd7PhMgCFY8p2wodBVcPhA&biw=2240&bih=1160 and that is made from castor oil plant (the enemy is a plant).
- Senior Combattant: Does the English word "senior" convey the sense of "experienced" or just the sense of "old/ mature" ? They say that in Japanese here the word means "experienced", "which has gone a step further / a level above".. maybe "senior" doesn't fit so well. The guy is an evolution to his two previous swap-colour.
- Serpent: When you google-image those kana you get only sea serpents and big sea serpents. That word is an old word for "snake", often used to depict sea serpents, serpents looking like dragons or hydraes (water serpents).
Here "Serpent" doesn't fit because the enemy isn't a snake but actually a half-serpent half-dragon sea creature. The enemy attacks with Ryûjin Danse (Ryûjin is a mythical sea dragon) and with "Serpent Breath" (translated on-the-fly by me) which clearly shows his dual nature. They went for "Sea Serpent".
- Under Lizard: Subspecies of lizard. That creature is always isolated: on the Cactus Island, on the Goblin Island or in the Temple of the Ancients. That confirms that the term "subspecies" does fit because a subspecies is always a branch of specific individuals geagraphicaly isolated from the main species from which it derives (the French wiki is clearer about that than the English wiki:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-esp%C3%A8ce ..that's in the paragraph named 'Concept'.. and here is the English wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subspecies) just as for our guy. So our creature belonging to a subspecies could make the prefix "Sub" a better choice here than the prefix "Under". That'd give "Sub Lizard" or "Sub-Lizard". "Under" wouldn't seem to be the best choice to indicate that the creature belongs to a subspecies.
Or it could be that "Under" would imply that our guy is an 'oppressed' creature, an 'underdog', 'which has no chance to win', because the enemy is rather weak at the moment of the game when we meet him.
- Semzealot: May share a vague association with the Slavic word "zimzelen" which means "evergreen":
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zimzelen- Zenene: "Zenene" in romaji, but the beginning of the word fits only with other words that begin with "gene" (..I personally don't get what that sentence means). The enemy has an attack referring to "géhenne"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/g%C3%A9henne (French version more rich:
https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/g%C3%A9henne). For the French project they went with a compression between "Gene" and "Géhenne" which gives "Génene", hinting that the genes of the creature take their origin in Hell.
- Zorokarter: Shouldn't it be a 'i' ?
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/KartirTook me the whole day x)
I'll see if I can get my hands onto some other pieces of documentation for non-dialogue text from their project.
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