Talk:Lao

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ONW appearance

Not really relevant to anything, i just wanted to point out that Lao gets about 5 seconds of screen time in ONW, during which he has only two lines, maybe a dozen words at most. I think it's a good illustration of the attention to detail that they had throughout the series, that they brought Lao's voice actor into the film just to say those two lines that they could easily have had Dusty (or one of the bridge crew) say instead. It continually blows my mind  ♥ kine @ 09:27, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Correct name

Rao could be an Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Italian, or Brazilian surname. Check the Wikipedia page here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rao_(surname)

More on the Chinese one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rao_(Chinese_surname)

Since this particular LotGH character looks Asian, I think it's a Chinese surname then. The current background info says "Lao, often Liu". Then it's 劉 (Trad.) / 刘 (Simp.), a very common Chinese surname. Mandarin reading is Liú, while in Cantonese is Lau, which indeed sounds like Lao, but I think this isn't the correct surname for this character. The issue lies in why the Japanese didn't use ラウ (ra-u), but ラオ (ra-o) instead. The Katakana for famous Hongkong actors (mostly are using Cantonese for their name pronunciation since Cantonese was the main language in Hongkong before it was returned to PRC in 1997) with the aforementioned surname, such as Andy Lau is アンディ・ラウ, "ra-u" not "ra-o". You can try the Japanese Wiki on Andy Lau or Google.

There is Láo surname, 勞 (Trad.) / 劳 (Simp.), but it's a rare surname. A more common surname is 饒 (Trad.) / 饶 (Simp.), in Mandarin is Ráo. A commonly known surname among the Chinese, but maybe not so for Westerners. In the West or other non-Chinese-speaking countries, Chinese people with this surname often use the Cantonese pronunciation: Yaw/Yew, or Hakkanese: Ngiau/Ngieu to call themselves with. Given the diversity of the names used in LotGH universe, I believe the author is more or less pretty knowledgeable about various names from various countries, not too mention he can always look up the dictionaries or the internet for ideas (wait, was there internet on the 80s?). So the probability he found Ráo (饒 / 饶) is high. At least better than the rare Láo (勞 / 劳).

Just my two cents :) 3island18 01:21, 19 March 2013 (UTC)