Name Information

There has always been a certain amount of controversy surrounding the correct spelling and pronunciation of Aerith's given name, stemming from the fact that two versions, when Romanised, have been officially released by Squaresoft; both Aerith and Aeris.

Although the spelling Aerith has been adopted in all English publications since the release of Kingdom Hearts, it is easy to see how the original confusion arose by looking at the structure of the Japanese language.

Japanese is syllabically based. Each character in both the Hiragana and Katakana alphabet, with the exception of vowels, represents a syllable rather than a single letter. For example the first 5 syllabic-characters in the katakana character set represent the following sounds:

Words not native to Japan, such as foreign words, are written in Japanese using the Katakana character set. The sound and spelling of such words are often altered in order to fit the standard syllables and vowel sounds of the Japanese language.

For example the word ice-cream becomes アイスクリーム (aisukuriimu).

Therefore the name Aerith, which is how her name appears on Japanese promotional material when written in the Roman alphabet, becomes エアリス (Earisu) when written in Katakana. In the English version of the original game, the name is given as Aeris. The main reason for this differing translation is due to the fact that the syllable ス (su) is the Japanese equivalent of both "s" and "th" at the end of English words and therefore can be translated either way.

The word Earisu is pronounced in Japanese as eh - ah - ri - su with the final "u" almost silent. Therefore it can be argued that while Aerith is the given Romanized spelling of the characters name, Aeris is actually closer to the Japanese pronunciation.

Name Meaning

Earisu is a non-standard Japanese equivalent of the English word Earth. This name meaning is reflected quite strongly in Aerith's character. She has the ability to communicate with the planet, and a deep-seated desire to heal and protect it. Some of her limit breaks are linked with the Earth, such as Breath of the Earth and Planet Protector. Also, in Advent Children, she is represented as a figure rather like Mother Earth, healing and protecting all the children of the planet.

Surname

Aerith's surname is given as Gainsborough, which is a traditional, though not very common, English surname. Gainsborough is the last name of her adoptive mother Elmyra, and Aerith took on this name when she was around 7 years old.

There has been some confusion over Aerith's surname at birth. It was a common misconception that her name at birth would have been Aerith Gast; due to the fact her biological father's name was given in the game as Professor Gast.

However, years later in the Final Fantasy VII Ultramania Omega guide, his name is given as Professor Gast Faramis. Technically this makes Aerith's name at birth, Aerith Faramis.

Trivia

Below are a collection of some little known facts and observations regarding Aerith's name. Any name meanings listed here are more than likely to be coincidental, and have not been confirmed by SquareEnix, but are interesting none the less.

• Aeris is the Latin word for air or sky.
• In the Final Fantasy VII debug room Aerith is referred to as Earith.
• Both Gainsborough and Earith are towns in the UK.
• The Aesir were the principal gods of Norse mythology. From their kingdom of Asgard, they watch over Midgard, the land of humans.

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