George Takei : The name Sulu

The name Sulu

Cannot be a Japanese name. There is no "Lu" in Japanese, or any "L" sound for that matter. If they wanted to use the name Sulu, the character should have been Filipino.

Re: The name Sulu

No chance that things could have changed in a couple hundred years? I don't remember, did they ever fully flesh out his ancestry? Was he adopted by someone with that last name?

Re: The name Sulu

In the original dossier for the program it states that Hikaru Sulu is of Asian extraction, mostly Japanese. Nowhere did it claim that his surname was Japanese.

Re: The name Sulu

Thanks. You should post that directly to the OP so he can see it.

Re: The name Sulu

Maybe his family name originated in the Philippines but emigrated to Japan generations before Sulu was born. Just like every last name in America came from somewhere else. Every Smith, Johnson, Miller, Williams, etc. in the USA brought their name with them from whatever country their family emigrated from (or adopted it after their arrival).

Re: The name Sulu

You guys are getting way to into this :) His character was played by a Japanese American man. The character's first name is Hikaru, which is Japanese. It really doesn't matter at all, just an observation.

Re: The name Sulu

lu and ru are pretty much equal interpretations of る, though ru would be more of a standard romanization. You might also have noticed, some time, that many names get changed when one moves to a new country. I've seen "impossible" names of Japanese ancestry, and solely Japanese ancestry. Ellis island messed up a lot of records.

When I look ar the name I think する, which is one of the most common word of all, meaning "to do", which seems an appropriate enough explanarion for his name, and his role.

Never met anyone with that name, but that doesn't prove a damned thing.

Re: The name Sulu

Like I said before, it is just an observation.

Re: The name Sulu

The name Sulu comes from the Sulu Sea just off the Philippians. Roddenberry flew missions out in the area in B-17's. The Sulu Sea is a body of water in the southwestern area of the Philippines, separated from the South China Sea in the northwest by Palawan and from the Celebes Sea in the southeast by the Sulu Archipelago. Borneo is found to the southwest and Visayas to the northeast.
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