Hughes' name meaning.
All right. So I’ve been thinking too much again. Big surprise there! This is the SECOND time I’m writing this freaking thing. I’ll spare you the nitty-gritties.
What’s so special about my thinking THIS time? It happens to combine a few of my favorite things, and one thing led to another….
1) Names
2) FMA
3) Language
4) Hughes
5) Character connections
6) Research
7) Shit no one cares about
8) Overanalysis.
In case you hadn’t guessed, I went into looking for the “meaning” of Maes Hughes’s name. Now, I know Arakawa has said (like we ever take her seriously) that she mostly picked names out a book of Western names. Ie, Jean Havoc. Seriously. Who’s named “Jean”? My sister is named “Jeanne”. “Jean” means “God is gracious”. I’m sure the Roy-Havoc fans could find some connection, if they thought of Roy as God and Havoc as his loyal subject, thinking he’s gracious (HAHAHAHAHA!!! Havoc knows better than most anyone that that is NOT true!), but, for the most part, I think it’s safe to say that “Jean” has no special meaning. “Jeanne” and “John”, the variants, also mean “God is gracious”. My brother and sister have those names. Wonder if the ‘rents know their kids have the same name? Just to give you an idea of how crazy names are.
Where Arakawa’s characters have crazy names like “Basque”, “Vato”, “Heymans”, “Kain”, “Zolf”, and “Sheska”, you really have to wonder. “Basque” is the only one that MS Word doesn’t attack with the red squiggles of death. However, I am not going to google all of THEIR names to death to try and determine what she was on.
So, back on topic! Does “Maes” have some deeper meaning? A made-up-on-the-spot name? How does it relate to his relations with other characters? What about “Hughes”?
Who knows? But I’m going to investigate and ramble about it anyways.
We’ll start with what we know. Mustang’s crew was named after aircraft. Yes, all of them. I won’t go into who was named after what or which last names are a misspelling of what, because I could go on FOREVER, but I will give the example of Roy and Riza being named after the P-51 Mustang (A WWII fighter plane) and the E-2 Hawkeye (no idea its function. I’m taking this off the top of my head).
It’s also worth nothing that the E-2 Hawkeye was designed by a man whose surname was Grumman. So there’s where General Grumman gets his name! It works, too, since he’s Hawkeye’s grandfather.
Hughes was likely named after Howard Hughes, who was…. A nutjob. …Oh, and an aircraft engineer, famous playboy, and filmmaker. But a very famous aviator. I know this because The Aviator was on TV one day and Dad and I had a loooong discussion about him. The next day, I named my rat “Hughes”. It only took the parents a month to figure out that he wasn’t named after the AVIATOR (and nutjob). …At least, not directly.
If you don’t know who Howard Hughes is - Wikipedia. Anyways, that’s the jist of it. I skimmed his article just now. I saw he was married to a woman named “JEAN”. …. I’m sorry. Anyways, this works.
Howard Hughes worked on airplanes, rite? And all of Mustang’s crew (Mustang included), among others, are named after aircraft. This connection WORKS, as Hughes is an advisor to Mustang and looks after him. Builds him up, in a way. It’s a metaphor that works.
And, yes, I’m holding back all the yaoi jokes and puns going through my head. Aren’t you proud of me?
It also has a lot to do with how Hughes is more “the brains”, doing deskwork, while Mustang and his crew are more actively involved. That’s not to say they’re always on the front lines or anything, but they have more active involvement than the head of investigations. …Though, if you asked Mustang, he’d say he FELT like he was chained to his desk. If he only did his damn paperwork on time…
Again, this is all speculation. It’s very likely that “Hughes” is just another aircraft-related name (like “Grumman”), and some craft WERE named after Howard Hughes (is it sad I know all this off the top of my HEAD O_o?).
Now, while this is probably completely irrelevant, I think it’s interesting. The meaning of Hughes’s surname (outside of the aviation sense) is really cool.
The literal meaning is “son of Hugh”. You can guess this WITHOUT looking it up, obviously. “Hugh” comes from the Old German “hug”, meaning “soul, mind, intellect”, or “heart, mind, spirit”. Something like that. Translations vary. I apologize if I am getting any of this wrong. You may throw things at me later if you wish.
Sound like our Maes to you? Sometimes, you really have to wonder about these names…
Another thing: “Huey” is a variant of the first name “Hugh”, and it’s highly speculated that “Fuery” is a mis-romanization of “Huey”, after some-other aircraft. Cool, huh?
ANYWAYS, moving on. Now, “Hughes” is easy, because there are about 340978329 people with that surname, its origin is easy to trace, and it has an obvious connection in the military’s naming theme.
“Maes”, not so much.
“Maes” is a fairly common surname. My childhood was traumatized and ruined by that STUPID infomercial guy, Billy Maes. Seriously! “HI! BILLY MAES HERE FOR- ” “SHUT THE HELL UP!”. I used to love watching infomercials when I was younger. I just loooovvvved the “convincing” antics of Billy Maes. Trying to sell me Oxy-Clean. Uh-huh. That guy acts like he’s on WAAAYYY too many pep pills. He’s worse than me at a con. People say I don’t know the meaning of “indoor voice”. Feh! I hate Billy Maes so much. Stupid, annoying, pep pill-using infomercial guy!
…Er, right. Even with it being a common surname, it’s hard to say where “Maes” comes from. “Mayes” is the only listing I can find for boys’ names. And there are a ton of possibilities.
The first is… Corn. For those in on the inside joke between me and my friends - yes, I’m laughing exactly as hard as you are. “Maize” is a type of Indian corn, and reading about it in a textbook is exactly how I got to wonder about the origin of “Maes” (so, yes, CORN is to blame for this ramble, Whoda thunk it?). Well, Maes CAN be corny (HA! *shot*), and, like corn, he is extremely useful, to the extent where others thrive off of him.
…This metaphor isn’t doing much for me. It’s kind of hard to take seriously after this one joke between me and my friends. No, you DON’T want to know. Trust me.
There’s one possibility. Another is that it’s a male variant of “Mae”, an alternate spelling of “May”. The 5th month of the year. I, personally, would hate to be named after a friggin’ MONTH, but let’s consider what the month is named after.
Maia, from Greek origin, means “Great mother”. Hey, that works! Maia was the Greek goddess of springtime (I think…) and the mother of my FAVORITE god, Hermes! Gotta love him. In Roman mythology, she’s also an earth goddess of springtime. Yay for consistency! I guess this suits our Maes, too.
Possibility number three! It is possible that “Maes” is a variant of “Thomas”. Based on discussions I’ve seen online, this is the most accepted theory as to the origin of this particular spelling/variant of the name “Maes”. Being the daughter of a genealogy nut, of course I’ve looked into this. It’s mostly described as being of Flemish origin as a short form of Thomas (“Thomaes”). “Thomas” is of biblical origin. Because I am also the daughter of a church administrator and devoted Christian (no, it’s not as annoying as you think it is =P), I looked into this as well. Also, I just thought of this - it could work for Rose, too.
The literal meaning of “Thomas” is “twin”. He was, in the Bible, one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. (Or “Twelve Disciples”, if you prefer). In church, mostly all you hear about Thomas is that he didn’t believe in Christ’s resurrection. Well, there’s a bit more to him than that! Being the daughter of a religious guy and devoted Christian, I don’t even have to move off the couch to reach over and grab a Bible (I could have saved myself the effort, since all of this is on Wikipedia… xD). If you flip to John 11, you can read about how Jesus is talking to his disciples about his decision to go to Judea despite Jews STONING HIM (yeah, I wouldn’t go back if I were stoned by people, unless I were stoned in the modern sense of the word. Hey, I made a funny!) . And Jesus tells his disciples that Lazarus (Mary’s brother, I think…) is dead and they have to go to him. Jesus really wants to go back to Judea, basically. And in John 11:16 Thomas says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
…I apologize if anyone who actually KNOWS anything about the Bible is reading this. I’m not good at understanding Bible-ness when I’m this tired. O.- I’m sure other sources (like Wikipedia) explain it better.
But YEAH. Doesn’t it make you think? O.O Holy jeez. While I am POSTIVE Arakawa wasn’t reading the BIBLE when coming up with names, that is pretty cool, huh? Thomas and Maes do have that connection in that they’re willing to die for who they believe in.
According to Wikipedia, he also speaks at the Last Supper, when Jesus tells his disciples they know where he is going, and Thomas says they have no idea. Forgive me for being too lazy to read.
Thomas is most known as “Doubtful Thomas” for doubting Christ’s Resurrection and refusing to believe it until he touches Jesus’ wounds. …Jesus shows up to him and he believes. (“Stop doubting and believe”, sayeth Jesus).
He later becomes a martyr, too.
Yeah. Holy crap. I think I choked on my breath when I found out. Does that fit our Maes, or what?? Thomas was known for both his disbelief, pessimism, and raging optimism. Hmmm….
While it’s nice to think of “Maes” as a form of “Thomas”, seeing as the origin suits him so well, it’s likely not the case. Him being named because of the origin of the name “Thomas”, I mean. Just very scary coincidence. They say there’s more to a name then we know. All kinds of hidden meanings, apparently.
Personally, I think whoever decided we were “fated” to have our names was very unhappy with their birth name and wanted to hope their name had more significance than someone flipping through the baby name book after they were born (no offense to anyone who believes otherwise). But you have to admit, random name or not, it is kind of scary. Anyone big on this stuff who thinks this might apply to original characters?
The fifth, and, for some reason, my favorite possibility, is a Welsh Celtic origin. “Maes” is the Welsh word for “field”. I dunno. It just seems like it fits. Simple, but hey. I like it.
Those are the most likely explanations for what “Maes” could mean. Where Arakawa GOT IT, I have no idea. It’s an extremely uncommon first name. But it’s definitely an interesting name. No matter what the explanation, it definitely suits him.
And Elysia? Oh dear god. There are about 349058340 different names it could have been derived from. However, thankfully, it is also listed as it’s own name, not a variant of “Alicia” or whatever. This is the most likely explanation, so we’ll go with this. The exact meaning on babynames.com is listed as “heaven”, of Greek/Latin origin. It’s also known to mean “struck by lightening”. It reminds me of the whole Hughes-Roy rain connotation. The original Greek was “Elysion”, which was Latinized as “Elysium”. Elysium was, according to this random baby names site, a part of the Underworld that was close to our idea of “heaven”, apparently. It also says this:
“Elysium is an obscure and mysterious name that evolved from a designation of a place or person struck by lightning (enelysion, enelysios).”
Cool, huh? Still, very eerie, isn’t it?
It also “might be a variant of Elissa”. Like Alicia, Elicia, Alycea (who’s actually my bro’s ex g/f), et cetera. “Elissa” is a variant of “Elizabeth”. Dammit. What is WITH people and name variations?
But I shouldn’t have to explain how “Heaven” relates to Maes. It’s kind of sad and uplifting at the same time. :3
“Gracia” should be obvious. Derived from “Grace”. It suits her fairly well. :3
“Roy” is interesting. From Scottish or Celtic, it means “Red”. A more commonly accepted meaning of “Roy” is “king”, of French origin. Both suit him very, very well. In case you were wondering. I love how he has such an easy name. The only one of these three that can be seen as having a significant connection to Maes is Elysia, who SHOULD, given that she’s his daughter. All of the characters have names, who, no matter which origin you accept, that work for them. It’s really pretty cool.
Another thing about Roy meaning “king” - isn’t it ironic that the Fuhrer’s first name is “King”? And in the manga, there was a metaphor for when his subordinates were relocated. “He’d lost his pawns”. This makes him the “king”. There needs to be a cosplay chess match with Roy as one of the kings. Names are REALLY cool.
…But, like I said, it’s also possible all these names were randomly picked.
Mostly, I just wanted to throw a few ideas out there. I apologize again for my lack of research and general idiocy here. XD; I’m not very good at these things. ^^;
What’s so special about my thinking THIS time? It happens to combine a few of my favorite things, and one thing led to another….
1) Names
2) FMA
3) Language
4) Hughes
5) Character connections
6) Research
7) Shit no one cares about
8) Overanalysis.
In case you hadn’t guessed, I went into looking for the “meaning” of Maes Hughes’s name. Now, I know Arakawa has said (like we ever take her seriously) that she mostly picked names out a book of Western names. Ie, Jean Havoc. Seriously. Who’s named “Jean”? My sister is named “Jeanne”. “Jean” means “God is gracious”. I’m sure the Roy-Havoc fans could find some connection, if they thought of Roy as God and Havoc as his loyal subject, thinking he’s gracious (HAHAHAHAHA!!! Havoc knows better than most anyone that that is NOT true!), but, for the most part, I think it’s safe to say that “Jean” has no special meaning. “Jeanne” and “John”, the variants, also mean “God is gracious”. My brother and sister have those names. Wonder if the ‘rents know their kids have the same name? Just to give you an idea of how crazy names are.
Where Arakawa’s characters have crazy names like “Basque”, “Vato”, “Heymans”, “Kain”, “Zolf”, and “Sheska”, you really have to wonder. “Basque” is the only one that MS Word doesn’t attack with the red squiggles of death. However, I am not going to google all of THEIR names to death to try and determine what she was on.
So, back on topic! Does “Maes” have some deeper meaning? A made-up-on-the-spot name? How does it relate to his relations with other characters? What about “Hughes”?
Who knows? But I’m going to investigate and ramble about it anyways.
We’ll start with what we know. Mustang’s crew was named after aircraft. Yes, all of them. I won’t go into who was named after what or which last names are a misspelling of what, because I could go on FOREVER, but I will give the example of Roy and Riza being named after the P-51 Mustang (A WWII fighter plane) and the E-2 Hawkeye (no idea its function. I’m taking this off the top of my head).
It’s also worth nothing that the E-2 Hawkeye was designed by a man whose surname was Grumman. So there’s where General Grumman gets his name! It works, too, since he’s Hawkeye’s grandfather.
Hughes was likely named after Howard Hughes, who was…. A nutjob. …Oh, and an aircraft engineer, famous playboy, and filmmaker. But a very famous aviator. I know this because The Aviator was on TV one day and Dad and I had a loooong discussion about him. The next day, I named my rat “Hughes”. It only took the parents a month to figure out that he wasn’t named after the AVIATOR (and nutjob). …At least, not directly.
If you don’t know who Howard Hughes is - Wikipedia. Anyways, that’s the jist of it. I skimmed his article just now. I saw he was married to a woman named “JEAN”. …. I’m sorry. Anyways, this works.
Howard Hughes worked on airplanes, rite? And all of Mustang’s crew (Mustang included), among others, are named after aircraft. This connection WORKS, as Hughes is an advisor to Mustang and looks after him. Builds him up, in a way. It’s a metaphor that works.
And, yes, I’m holding back all the yaoi jokes and puns going through my head. Aren’t you proud of me?
It also has a lot to do with how Hughes is more “the brains”, doing deskwork, while Mustang and his crew are more actively involved. That’s not to say they’re always on the front lines or anything, but they have more active involvement than the head of investigations. …Though, if you asked Mustang, he’d say he FELT like he was chained to his desk. If he only did his damn paperwork on time…
Again, this is all speculation. It’s very likely that “Hughes” is just another aircraft-related name (like “Grumman”), and some craft WERE named after Howard Hughes (is it sad I know all this off the top of my HEAD O_o?).
Now, while this is probably completely irrelevant, I think it’s interesting. The meaning of Hughes’s surname (outside of the aviation sense) is really cool.
The literal meaning is “son of Hugh”. You can guess this WITHOUT looking it up, obviously. “Hugh” comes from the Old German “hug”, meaning “soul, mind, intellect”, or “heart, mind, spirit”. Something like that. Translations vary. I apologize if I am getting any of this wrong. You may throw things at me later if you wish.
Sound like our Maes to you? Sometimes, you really have to wonder about these names…
Another thing: “Huey” is a variant of the first name “Hugh”, and it’s highly speculated that “Fuery” is a mis-romanization of “Huey”, after some-other aircraft. Cool, huh?
ANYWAYS, moving on. Now, “Hughes” is easy, because there are about 340978329 people with that surname, its origin is easy to trace, and it has an obvious connection in the military’s naming theme.
“Maes”, not so much.
“Maes” is a fairly common surname. My childhood was traumatized and ruined by that STUPID infomercial guy, Billy Maes. Seriously! “HI! BILLY MAES HERE FOR- ” “SHUT THE HELL UP!”. I used to love watching infomercials when I was younger. I just loooovvvved the “convincing” antics of Billy Maes. Trying to sell me Oxy-Clean. Uh-huh. That guy acts like he’s on WAAAYYY too many pep pills. He’s worse than me at a con. People say I don’t know the meaning of “indoor voice”. Feh! I hate Billy Maes so much. Stupid, annoying, pep pill-using infomercial guy!
…Er, right. Even with it being a common surname, it’s hard to say where “Maes” comes from. “Mayes” is the only listing I can find for boys’ names. And there are a ton of possibilities.
The first is… Corn. For those in on the inside joke between me and my friends - yes, I’m laughing exactly as hard as you are. “Maize” is a type of Indian corn, and reading about it in a textbook is exactly how I got to wonder about the origin of “Maes” (so, yes, CORN is to blame for this ramble, Whoda thunk it?). Well, Maes CAN be corny (HA! *shot*), and, like corn, he is extremely useful, to the extent where others thrive off of him.
…This metaphor isn’t doing much for me. It’s kind of hard to take seriously after this one joke between me and my friends. No, you DON’T want to know. Trust me.
There’s one possibility. Another is that it’s a male variant of “Mae”, an alternate spelling of “May”. The 5th month of the year. I, personally, would hate to be named after a friggin’ MONTH, but let’s consider what the month is named after.
Maia, from Greek origin, means “Great mother”. Hey, that works! Maia was the Greek goddess of springtime (I think…) and the mother of my FAVORITE god, Hermes! Gotta love him. In Roman mythology, she’s also an earth goddess of springtime. Yay for consistency! I guess this suits our Maes, too.
Possibility number three! It is possible that “Maes” is a variant of “Thomas”. Based on discussions I’ve seen online, this is the most accepted theory as to the origin of this particular spelling/variant of the name “Maes”. Being the daughter of a genealogy nut, of course I’ve looked into this. It’s mostly described as being of Flemish origin as a short form of Thomas (“Thomaes”). “Thomas” is of biblical origin. Because I am also the daughter of a church administrator and devoted Christian (no, it’s not as annoying as you think it is =P), I looked into this as well. Also, I just thought of this - it could work for Rose, too.
The literal meaning of “Thomas” is “twin”. He was, in the Bible, one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. (Or “Twelve Disciples”, if you prefer). In church, mostly all you hear about Thomas is that he didn’t believe in Christ’s resurrection. Well, there’s a bit more to him than that! Being the daughter of a religious guy and devoted Christian, I don’t even have to move off the couch to reach over and grab a Bible (I could have saved myself the effort, since all of this is on Wikipedia… xD). If you flip to John 11, you can read about how Jesus is talking to his disciples about his decision to go to Judea despite Jews STONING HIM (yeah, I wouldn’t go back if I were stoned by people, unless I were stoned in the modern sense of the word. Hey, I made a funny!) . And Jesus tells his disciples that Lazarus (Mary’s brother, I think…) is dead and they have to go to him. Jesus really wants to go back to Judea, basically. And in John 11:16 Thomas says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
…I apologize if anyone who actually KNOWS anything about the Bible is reading this. I’m not good at understanding Bible-ness when I’m this tired. O.- I’m sure other sources (like Wikipedia) explain it better.
But YEAH. Doesn’t it make you think? O.O Holy jeez. While I am POSTIVE Arakawa wasn’t reading the BIBLE when coming up with names, that is pretty cool, huh? Thomas and Maes do have that connection in that they’re willing to die for who they believe in.
According to Wikipedia, he also speaks at the Last Supper, when Jesus tells his disciples they know where he is going, and Thomas says they have no idea. Forgive me for being too lazy to read.
Thomas is most known as “Doubtful Thomas” for doubting Christ’s Resurrection and refusing to believe it until he touches Jesus’ wounds. …Jesus shows up to him and he believes. (“Stop doubting and believe”, sayeth Jesus).
He later becomes a martyr, too.
Yeah. Holy crap. I think I choked on my breath when I found out. Does that fit our Maes, or what?? Thomas was known for both his disbelief, pessimism, and raging optimism. Hmmm….
While it’s nice to think of “Maes” as a form of “Thomas”, seeing as the origin suits him so well, it’s likely not the case. Him being named because of the origin of the name “Thomas”, I mean. Just very scary coincidence. They say there’s more to a name then we know. All kinds of hidden meanings, apparently.
Personally, I think whoever decided we were “fated” to have our names was very unhappy with their birth name and wanted to hope their name had more significance than someone flipping through the baby name book after they were born (no offense to anyone who believes otherwise). But you have to admit, random name or not, it is kind of scary. Anyone big on this stuff who thinks this might apply to original characters?
The fifth, and, for some reason, my favorite possibility, is a Welsh Celtic origin. “Maes” is the Welsh word for “field”. I dunno. It just seems like it fits. Simple, but hey. I like it.
Those are the most likely explanations for what “Maes” could mean. Where Arakawa GOT IT, I have no idea. It’s an extremely uncommon first name. But it’s definitely an interesting name. No matter what the explanation, it definitely suits him.
And Elysia? Oh dear god. There are about 349058340 different names it could have been derived from. However, thankfully, it is also listed as it’s own name, not a variant of “Alicia” or whatever. This is the most likely explanation, so we’ll go with this. The exact meaning on babynames.com is listed as “heaven”, of Greek/Latin origin. It’s also known to mean “struck by lightening”. It reminds me of the whole Hughes-Roy rain connotation. The original Greek was “Elysion”, which was Latinized as “Elysium”. Elysium was, according to this random baby names site, a part of the Underworld that was close to our idea of “heaven”, apparently. It also says this:
“Elysium is an obscure and mysterious name that evolved from a designation of a place or person struck by lightning (enelysion, enelysios).”
Cool, huh? Still, very eerie, isn’t it?
It also “might be a variant of Elissa”. Like Alicia, Elicia, Alycea (who’s actually my bro’s ex g/f), et cetera. “Elissa” is a variant of “Elizabeth”. Dammit. What is WITH people and name variations?
But I shouldn’t have to explain how “Heaven” relates to Maes. It’s kind of sad and uplifting at the same time. :3
“Gracia” should be obvious. Derived from “Grace”. It suits her fairly well. :3
“Roy” is interesting. From Scottish or Celtic, it means “Red”. A more commonly accepted meaning of “Roy” is “king”, of French origin. Both suit him very, very well. In case you were wondering. I love how he has such an easy name. The only one of these three that can be seen as having a significant connection to Maes is Elysia, who SHOULD, given that she’s his daughter. All of the characters have names, who, no matter which origin you accept, that work for them. It’s really pretty cool.
Another thing about Roy meaning “king” - isn’t it ironic that the Fuhrer’s first name is “King”? And in the manga, there was a metaphor for when his subordinates were relocated. “He’d lost his pawns”. This makes him the “king”. There needs to be a cosplay chess match with Roy as one of the kings. Names are REALLY cool.
…But, like I said, it’s also possible all these names were randomly picked.
Mostly, I just wanted to throw a few ideas out there. I apologize again for my lack of research and general idiocy here. XD; I’m not very good at these things. ^^;