Looking to understand a fantasy name

Question

This is related to Beyblade, regarding a team exclusive to a game that didn't get translated to English. Each blader has their own holy beast to command and I'm not getting the name of one of them.

• The winged horse beast is called ペガシオン; Pegacion, with the usual "-us" ending replaced with "-ion"
• The kitsune beast is called ウルペース; Vulpes, just the Latin word for "fox".
• The boar beast is called アグリオス; Agrios. I presume it's named after Circe's son from Greek mythology, but in any case I've come across another franchise in which a boar was called Agrios, so I reckon this romanization is correct.

The fourth one is グランクローネ, a beast based on the tripedal crow, probably specifically Yatagarasu. Now, for my questions:

• グラン I understand as "grand" with a French pronunciation. I've on occasion seen fantasy names that use グラン instead of グランド and I'm curious how to understand this. Are グラン and グランド interchangeable from a Japanese perspective or are there situations where one is prefered over the other (aside from set terms like グランプリ)? And is グラン necessarily pronounced the French way? Should I look at クローネ as French just because I do グラン?
• Assuming クローネ is the English word "crow" with "ne" slapped to the end, what is "ne"? With Pegacion up above, I know the "-t/cion" ending from words such as "television" or "vacation". But I have no such familiarity with "ne". There is an Egyptian character in the franchise named Cairona, which is "Cairo" + "na", which seems a comparable name construction to "Crow" + "ne", but it still leaves me confused what these extra letters at the end are supposed to evoke.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

・ I could not find any specific data on this, but if I would guess, I'd say that is natural, maybe almost automatic, that when the speaker are trying to associate with English culture or something imagined as being of English origin the speaker would use グランド, and the same should occur with the French グラン. As グランプリ is of French origin the "french" way is emulated. グランド キャニオン comes from English and Mexico's リオ・グランデ川　or Brazil's リオ・グランデ・ド・スル州 would be examples of one more variety. I'd guess that the speaker noticing (or at least imagining) the culture he/she is referring to, he/she chooses from グラン、グランド、グランデ。

・ I do not believe a author will use the words indistinctly. I believe that if a author of a novel, game, manga or whatever chooses some word, he wants to say something through it. So I'll list the possibilities I've come up with, on suffix 'ne'

1. You talked about the egyptian character, I don't know about the egyptian language, but the Egypt talked greek for a long time in ancient history (before turning to Arabic), and in greek there is a class of words that in the accusative case ends with "na"/"ne". This usually turns the word a direct object of a clause. And in ancient greek Cairo could be χαίρω, that is the verb rejoice, joy, to be glad. And can also be used as a greeting "hello", "bye" (the greeting remains in modern greek). [It doesn't help to understand the クローネ, but maybe helps to understand the CAIRONA in a different way?]

クロー indeed seems to be "Crow".

2. The scientific name for the crow is "corvus corone" but the katakana doesn't sounds to fit well, because クローネ streches.

3. So if we take the Italian as @kimi tanaka suggested, Crow = Corvo and the 'ne' would be the plural indicating suffix. But the italian for Crows isn't 'corvone', it's 'corvi'. Even if it were Corvone the katakana would not become クローネ.

4. Do you think The English 'crone' meaning old fit well? Because if it does, we solve the meaning, but the katakana would not be extended クロ(ー)ネ.

5. As you've already noted the Grand is in the french pronounce, and probably this is a clue. Because the french for Crow is "corbeau", but the french for "crown" is "couronne".

I don't know. Since you seems to be way more acquainted with the game I think that just you can decide about what makes more sense. Although I've got excited about it.

If I would guess, I'd be with number 5. Because it seems to solve the streching, and have no problems with the meaning. In fact, maybe the author was thinking on a puzzle on Grand Crow and Grande Couronne. A big crow with a big crown.

Answer 2

I am not sure about the グラン and グランド are always interchangeble.

So, I skip this and move onto クローネ. I think you are correct to assume クローネ comes from 八咫烏{やたがらす}:yatagarasu. And 八咫烏{やたがらす} is the symbol of national football of Japan.

Then, the author wished Japanese football team will win the tournaments or some titles.

Therefore,I reckon the suffix-"ne" comes from "Campione" in Italian or "Throne" in English.

The wikipedia article says 『爆転{ばくてん}シュート ベイブレード』は2001年から2002年に全国の小学生の間で大流行した.

I guess 爆転{ばくてん}シュート comes from overhead kick キャプテン翼{つばさ}.

Answer 3

The game seems to be focussing on creating interesting/fun/cool names by freely using katakana words. So even though グラン and グランド are indeed the "French" and "English" versions of the word grand, here they are 100% equivalent and I have no doubt that グラン would have been replaced by グランド if the creators had thought that it sounded better.

クローネ is not a well-known word in Japanese, but my own guess would be that it comes from krone which is a Danish/Norwegian/German word for "crown" (also the name of the Danish currency), so it might give it a European ring. Plus, the crow in the picture even wears a krone. (I cannot imagine that it would be クロー + ネ, but of course I cannot refute this thesis either.)

Should I look at クローネ as French just because I do グラン?

Certainly not! There also appears to be デビルクローネ, which is undoubtedly devil + クローネ, but you cannot at the same time conclude that クローネ is English.