What do most of the spell names mean?

Never think about the german links as I never learned german ! But it's a very interesting theory IMHO ! Scnell too seems to be a great explanation
And about Pscave I read something about it too, now that you mentionned it....Sure that I had printed it and I'll try to take a look as soon as I can !

I lived in Germany 3.5 years.......military back then. So picked up enough to notice, "Hey, Phantasy Star! terms"

Maybe I missed something in my native language, but I don't get the connection between Saner and schnell, sorry. I always read "san" and "saner" like the Englich word for a healthy mental stability, sane. Yeah, Foi and Feuer sound similar though, I agree. Other connections to German may be names like Lutz, Rolf and maaaayybeee Lena (pretty generic German names, Lutz and Rolf being rather old fashioned). But that doesn't help with the tech names. I guess some of them have their origin in existing words (regen for example, or gra for Gravity) and some may just happen to be because the devs thhought it sounded cool. Or played Scrabble. Or were drunk. Some of the monsters in PS III especially seemed to me like they had a glass of wine too much. For example the blotter (http://pscave.com/ps3/enemies/blotter.shtml). Looked like a micro chip which the devs threw at a wall in despair and decided to make an enemy out of the remains.
Other tech ideas:
Hinas: Short of "Hinaus" (German, some kind of "get out of here", depending on the context), maybe just a coincidence.
Res: Restoration
Anti: Antidote
Gra: Gravitation

Maybe.

Apprentice_of_Crys wrote:

Maybe I missed something in my native language, but I don't get the connection between Saner and schnell, sorry. I always read "san" and "saner" like the Englich word for a healthy mental stability, sane. Yeah, Foi and Feuer sound similar though, I agree. Other connections to German may be names like Lutz, Rolf and maaaayybeee Lena (pretty generic German names, Lutz and Rolf being rather old fashioned). But that doesn't help with the tech names. I guess some of them have their origin in existing words (regen for example, or gra for Gravity) and some may just happen to be because the devs thhought it sounded cool. Or played Scrabble. Or were drunk. Some of the monsters in PS III especially seemed to me like they had a glass of wine too much. For example the blotter (http://pscave.com/ps3/enemies/blotter.shtml). Looked like a micro chip which the devs threw at a wall in despair and decided to make an enemy out of the remains.
Other tech ideas:
Hinas: Short of "Hinaus" (German, some kind of "get out of here", depending on the context), maybe just a coincidence.
Res: Restoration
Anti: Antidote
Gra: Gravitation

Maybe.

Though what about 'Ner'? In PSII, there were two techniques, Ner and Saner. PSIV Only had Saner. 'Sa' before a technique implies plural, like how Savol is a Vol that works on all enemies. So I guess the mystery is what 'Ner' means.

I've also noticed that Sar is actually supposed to be short for 'Sares'.

I don't know the answers to Sares or Savol. I don't even know what VOL stands for. Obviously something to do with this, but I have no idea what language it comes from.

But I can attest that in Japanese PSII, both the remake and the original, Saner is Schnell transliterated. Perhaps with Vol, Ner, etc, they just took the Sa and ran with it as a prefix. Remember, in this case, it was translated from Sherman then to Japanese and then to English.

There are a ton of techniques that we still don't know the etymology for. Rimpa, Remit, Doran, Gellun, etc. There may be a document on PSCave which explains this, but I'm not quite sure.

I have no idea what the Na and Gi prefixes mean however.

More evidence of German:

Lutz
Fo=Feur (fire)
Wat=Wasser (water)
Nish=Harnisch (german type of armor, where we got the term Harness)

And there's a lot more, I believe PSCave has a doc explaining this. I'm just going off memory because I know a bit of German, but not enough to hold a rally.