Many of names in various Diablo 4 regions are heavily inspired by existing cultures. The NW of the map is a Slavic land. NE is British Isles, Southern areas are Turkic/Persian, etc.
What I noticed a lot is many of the NPC names are borrowed from other cultures. They are, however mostly pronounced wrong. It’s almost as if the names were picked at random from a text source without anyone verifying how the words are originally pronounced.
Early in the story we encounter the widow of man named Julek. It’s a common name in Poland (where I am from), but it should be read as Yulek. Instead, the voiceovers feature the same J sound as in John or James.
Yonca is a common Turkish name, but once again the pronunciation is all wrong. Her name (meaning “clover”) should read more like Yondja - but instead we are served with Yonka.
There are a whole bunch of these all over the place, and I am only touching on Polish/Slavic and Turkic/Persian influences that I am personally familiar with. No idea if Celtic and Nord words are butchered in equal measure.
The whole situation reminds me of that old Super Nintendo game Fighting Baseball where some Japanese developer was tasked with coming up with plausible-sounding US names. These are the ones on the attached image.
Rant over.
I really like Diablo 4. I just wish the multicultural influences received the same level of polish and attention as the graphics, mechanics and other areas.
I can’t get too worked up over this.
For one thing, there are countless languages and dialects in the world today where similar words get pronounced differently. Take a name like José. Spanish speakers tend to make the J sound closer to an English H, while Portuguese speakers will use a more English-like J.
Moreover, pronunciations evolve over time. A lot. My own surname centuries ago sounded nothing like how I pronounce it today.
Diablo is it’s own world which may or may not be connected to ours. Usually, fantasy narratives are loosely based on the past, though I was reading some Terry Brooks and discovered his fantasy realm is actually post-apocalyptic Earth. Kind of clever how he tied that in. Anyway, all I’m saying is that both distance and time can distort language quite a bit.