The 55 actors

Why the names are what they are

Nothing here is arbitrary, which matters: a list of 55 invented names would be harder to learn than the sounds it replaces. Two rules fix every one of them.

1. The name echoes the initial. The Baker is b-, the Hunter is h-, the Gardener is g-. For the retroflex sounds we use the closest English one: zh- sounds like the English j, so it takes a J name; ch- takes Ch, sh- takes Sh.
2. What kind of thing it is encodes the medial. A man means the initial stands alone. A woman means an -i- follows it. An animal means a -u-. An object means a -ü-. So the category is not decoration: it is the second half of the syllable.

Put them together and 猪 zhū resolves without being memorised: zh- wants a J name, -u- makes it an animal, so the actor is the Jackal. Not a name someone picked at random, a name the sound chose.

The zero-initial and -ü- rows are looser, because there is no consonant to echo. Those are the handful worth renaming to someone you actually know, which the app lets you do: a real person beats a stranger every time, and renaming one updates every character that uses it.