What the characters call themselves and each other

[mecurtin]

I just put a link in the Resources post about a great post from foxghost about What characters call each other (and themselves) in Guardian [the novel], including the fact that Daqing basically uses the royal We, while Zhao Yunlan plays around with pronouns and names based on his mood.

I yearn for some of you native speakers to do the same for the drama. What pronouns do the characters use for themselves? And what do they call each other? Apparently in the novel ZYL uses an array of cringe-worthy endearments for Shen Wei; does he do anything at all similar in the drama?

Comments

[lynndyre]

asya_ana had a post with most of the nicknames actually! Here.

I think the only endearment in the drama is that single 'Xiao Wei' in ep 21, though.

[naye]

Seconding very much needing this kind of resource! The drama definitely doesn't have as much in the way of endearments, but there's definitely patterns in what the characters call each other? For example I think Xiao Guo calls Zhu Hong "Hong-jie", but I think Zhao Yunlan does too on occasion? Unless I'm misremenbering. Which I might be! (And different people in the SID call him "Chief Zhao" and "boss" and "Lao Zhao" but I don't know if anyone there calls him anything else other than the rare "Zhao Yunlan"?)

[zeest]

This reminds me of something I only noticed on rewatch. In the first episode, Zhao Yunlan tells some random police personnel to call him xiao-Zhao (little Zhao). But he's likely older than them and also outranks them, so if he wants to be friendly with them using "lao" (old) is more suitable? I'm thinking since his dad is also in the same line of work, his dad would be "lao-Zhao" and therefore Zhao Yunlan refers to himself as "xiao-Zhao" when talking to people in the police force, regardless of seniority. Though, of course, the baby police here don't call him that and use Chief Zhao instead.

And then in episode 8 he calls up the university and straights up introduces himself as Shen Wei's good friend, xiao-Zhao. I can't say for sure where on the etiquette scale this falls on but I'm guessing it's at least a little inappropriate. Considering the image Shen Wei is likely to have at the university, just imagine the rumour mill after that call.

[likealeafonthewind]

I'm so glad you brought this up, I've found it really interesting. I'm just going to add that in episode 15, the Justiciar greets Shen Wei as Hei-pao-dai-ren, which gets translated into Mr. Black Robe, and Zhao Yunlan as the Lord of Zhenhun Token.

我的 小 云澜 Spoilers for episode 34

[sam_gardener]

Spoilers for episode 34

So in ep 34 when Ye Zun is pretending to be Shen Wei he asks where Zhao Yun Lan is, calling him "my little Yun Lan" 我的 小 云澜. After he leaves Wang Zheng says something like "doesn't Professor Shen seem a little off" to Sang Zan. Hard to know if Ye Zun actually imagined that's how Shen Wei would talk about Zhao Yun Lan to others, or if he was messing with them (yeah okay I think he was messing with them). But he didn't get the idea out of nowhere.

Zhao Yun Lan calls himself Zhao Yun Lan when talking to himself, ep 4 comes to mind but I think he does it other times as well. Also at least once I noticed him using "I, Zhao Yun Lan" when speaking to others and it was translated as just "I".