Newmans or Numans?

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Great excuse for bad spelling!

The creation of new words to express ideas isn't "bad." It's the natural evolution of human communication. There are plenty of words in common use today that didn't exist a thousand years ago. For instance, "telephone."

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Yeah, still not buying it as valid just because someone made it up.

By that reasoning, no form of language would be valid. It all started with someone making words up.

Let's also not forget that the spelling "Numan" is a pre-existing word from before Phantasy Star came around. It's a real life name. Obviously it likely wouldn't have the same meaning, but it wouldn't be the first time a new meaning has been applied to an old word or name.

I like "Numan" more, I think it looks better than "Newman". Other than the shallow fact that I think "Numan" looks better than "Newman", I think the word "Numan" looks more like a species name and "Newman" looks more like an Engrish word.

Newman VS Numan?

It's just a transliteration of "ニューマン".

I'm fine with either.

It's like getting underwear in a bunch for people writing "Hadoken" or "Hadouken"

Newman and Newmans for me. Never liked the "Numan" formula, never will.

To me, Numan sounds like a flaky derivation of a poor Japanese translation, where Newman sounds like a sci-fi term describing exactly what the race is: a new race based on mankind.

To each his own.

I like Numan, because it spelled like, and sounds like human. If newman is supposed to be pronounced like new man, than it's really generic, and the plural form new mans is just awkward. I pronounce them both to rhyme with human anyway.

I'm ok with the two...too ! But I tend to prefer Numan because Newman make me think about...paul ! lol
No but really with Numan you can pronounce it two or three ways different (hard to describe here !!), even like Newman so... maybe easier to handle.

Lots of things to comment on this thread.

1) I think of Paul Newman, too. But that is not a bad thing. He was great.

2) I agree that, being a Spanish speaker, the term "newman" does not automatically look bad for us as it may for some native English speakers.

3) Having grown up with Marvel Comics all my life, I knew the animals-evolved-into-humans created by the High Evolutionary as the "New Men". This was before I knew of Newmans from PS. This makes it as valid for Sci-Fi as the "numan" term.

4) No matter if I agree somewhat with a few of his points, if I ever behave as disgustingly as insult-anyone-and-everyone from the previous pages, please kill me.

My position is that, since "newman" seems like the original intent and is a valid choice, I am perfectly fine with it. I actually just learned now that the Japanese are in charge of localization now. I often wondered why the names had been respected on PSU on both regions. I see that as a good thing. What I see as a bad thing is that the Japanese do not seem very interested on translating the new games for us...

Lots of interesting opinion and great discussion regarding Newmans or Numans here in this topic thread.

Which do you like best ... Newmans or Numans?

I agree with Icecypher above on the first thing that comes to my mind is Paul Newman . Second thing that comes to mind is Victor Newman from the soap opera "Young And The Restless" .

I guess I will have to go with Newman. Although I like how the Numan is spelled.

Silver_Surfer1 wrote:

Lots of interesting opinion and great discussion regarding Newmans or Numans here in this topic thread.

Which do you like best ... Newmans or Numans?

I agree with Icecypher above on the first thing that comes to my mind is Paul Newman . Second thing that comes to mind is Victor Newman from the soap opera "Young And The Restless" .

I guess I will have to go with Newman. Although I like how the Numan is spelled.

I never thought about Victor Newman ! I know that name (even if I've never watched any episode from "Young And The Restless" ! (in french it was translated as "les feux de l'amour" : so it's sort of "The fires of love" ).

I like Numan; it always made me think of the musician Gary Numan, who incorporates many, many sci-fi themes within his music, which itself, especially te 1979-1982 stuff, reminded me of Phantasy Star.

But Thoul is correct. Regardless of Numan or Newman, its spelled and pronounced the same, treated the same, in Japanese.

So it makes it as moot as Palma/Palm/Parma, Mota/Motavia/Motabia, Dezo/Dezolis/Dezoris etc. Its all the same, with personal preference irrelevant.