Sabella? Szabla? Ca va?

[takenoko]

Saabera サーベラ

So what is it? I thought it was saber+bella, but I've been told otherwise

I think Luna claimed it was Sabel but it was too similar to Saber so they added an A?

But Jehu e-mailed me and said it should be "Szabla". "It is based on a Polish version of Sabre."

What do you guys think?

[Lunagel]

No offense to the guy, but Polish is not Toei's first thought when coming up with cool foreign words. English, Italian, French, maaaaybe German, but Toei usually doesn't look to non-Romance languages for the simple reason that they want to keep the show accessible. Everyone knows at least the basics of English, which is why it gets used the most.

The word "saber" in Japanese can be done two ways, セイバー (seibaa) the English pronunciation like in the show, and the older サーベル (saaberu), which is a Dutch loan word. I took a listen to the polish szabla and while I admit it could be pronounced サーベラ　(saabera), I think a far more likely pronunciation would be サーブラ (saabura).

This is all well and good, but the big deciding factor for me is always going to be what native speakers think. And across multiple fan sites, the consensus was that her name was a derivation of the Dutch loan word, so I'm gonna say definitively it's not Szabla. Personally I was pushing for spelling it Sabela.

[msf232]

So "Sabera" has gone out the window, I assume?

[HowlingSnail]

I mean, it's probably the word Szabla, given that's Polish for Saber, and it matches her sword's style. The fact that it's Saabera instead of Saabura is weird though.

I mean, if they can write Geiz as ゲイツ and Decade as ディケイド, they clearly don't care too much about the katakana matching the romanisation.

No offense to the guy, but Polish is not Toei's first thought when coming up with cool foreign words.

Kamen Rider Malika says high. And Sigurd. It's clearly the word Szabla though. Especially when you consider how many of the show's Riders are named after swords.

[Lunagel]

No offense to the guy, but Polish is not Toei's first thought when coming up with cool foreign words.

Kamen Rider Malika says high. And Sigurd. It's clearly the word Szabla though. Especially when you consider how many of the show's Riders are named after swords.

Malika is Arabic and Sigurd is Germanic, soooo... Still not Polish.

I mean, if they can write Geiz as ゲイツ and Decade as ディケイド, they clearly don't care too much about the katakana matching the romanisation.

They do match though, that's how you pronounce "decade" in Japanese and you can write z as tsu.

I mean, it's probably the word Szabla, given that's Polish for Saber, and it matches her sword's style. The fact that it's Saabera instead of Saabura is weird though.

Again, native speakers are going to recognize it as the Dutch loan word. Occam's razor, it's a bastardization of the existing word in Japanese.

[Kamen Rider Ookalf]

TV-Asashi's page for the character is up now, and it seems they're going with "Sabela".

https://www.tv-asahi.co.jp/saber/rider/sabela/

Of course, official romanizations aren't always the best at getting the original meaning across, but it's still something to consider.

[Lunagel]

TV-Asashi's page for the character is up now, and it seems they're going with "Sabela".

https://www.tv-asahi.co.jp/saber/rider/sabela/

Of course, official romanizations aren't always the best at getting the original meaning across, but it's still something to consider.

Called it

[takenoko]

Tsk. They misspelled it. Bella has two l's

[TheNinjaDragon]

Tsk. They misspelled it. Bella has two l's

At this point, I'm pretty sure we have bigger issues about this show to worry about.

[takenoko]

I'm not going to lie. Normally, I have an overinflated sense of conviction in what's correct. But this time, I honestly don't know? If you look up szabela, the hilt for some of those blades look very much like Reika's. The only issue is that her blade is straight while most szabela look like they're curved swords

Luna's point is pretty compelling too. Sabel looks too much like Saber in japanese. So add an a at the end to make it more feminine

I honestly think Sabella is the superior name, but I actually don't feel like that's the intended name from Toei, which is a pity

[msf232]

I vote for Sabela now, now that it's already out