# Wu Jen? What is it?



## Shin Okada (Oct 19, 2005)

Hello. Does anybody know the origin of this class name?

It sounds like a chinese word. But actually, current chinese PinYin does not have "Jen" sound. Maybe it is "Yen" or "Gen" but I am not sure.

If that is a chinese word, that word should have meanings. Better if I can ascertain actual characters of original Chinese word.

Any help will be welcomed.


----------



## FireLance (Oct 19, 2005)

My guess is, it's probably the mandarin wu1 ren2 (witch/warlock/shaman) pronounced in some dialect. I was going to say possibly Japanese, but I guess you'd know if it was, right?


----------



## Shin Okada (Oct 19, 2005)

FireLance said:
			
		

> I was going to say possibly Japanese, but I guess you'd know if it was, right?




Does not sound like a Japanese word. And all of my friends are saying the same.


----------



## Megatron (Oct 19, 2005)

I remember reading somewhere that was literally "witch monk" or some such.
also, try "Wu Jin"


----------



## Drowbane (Oct 19, 2005)

bump (edited out as I don't know what I'm talking about...  uts down the rum: Happy B-day to me!)


----------



## Shin Okada (Oct 19, 2005)

Hmmmm. Have you guys ever heard of this word outside D&D or Shadowrun?


----------



## Goblyns Hoard (Oct 19, 2005)

Could it be Zhen in the chinese instead of Jen? - that might sound similar enough to have got lost in the translation


----------



## Henrix (Oct 19, 2005)

If Wu Jen is a Wade-Giles translitteration the pinyin would be Wu Ren.
Here's a handy table.

This makes Firelances translation plausible.


----------



## Shin Okada (Oct 19, 2005)

Henrix said:
			
		

> If Wu Jen is a Wade-Giles translitteration the pinyin would be Wu Ren.
> Here's a handy table.
> 
> This makes Firelances translation plausible.




Thanks. So Wu-Ren in today's Beijing. That can mean "shaman",  "sorcerer", or "medium person".

Hmm.. if Wade-Giles is supposed to be based on or influenced by Cantonese, "jen" should be pronounced as "yen" or "yan". Not like "Wu-Gen" but like "Wu-Yen". That is a kind of surprise as many Japanese D&D players are calling it "Wu-Gen" without clue to the original Chinsese word.


----------



## Henrix (Oct 19, 2005)

Yes, if I recall correctly Wade-Giles is based on Cantonese, in the mid-19th c.!

The most annoying part of Wade-Giles is that it works best if you sort of try to pronounce it in british english!


----------



## Henrix (Oct 19, 2005)

Shin Okada said:
			
		

> "medium person"



You are not talking about size here, right?


----------



## Shin Okada (Oct 19, 2005)

Henrix said:
			
		

> You are not talking about size here, right?




Not the size. I meen spiritualistic medium, of course


----------



## Gabriel Stryffe (Oct 19, 2005)

You have to consider also, Gary Gygax and a lot of the other "geniuses" (yeah right) responsible for D&D OA did not do as much -though they did do a considerable amount- research as they could/should have done before the book was released. And the book was targeted at gamers who wanted more Ninjas and Martial arts in their D&D Games. So the process of determining what to call the OA wizards went like this

GARY: "Ok, we've got Ninjas, we've got some martial arts, what else do we need to put into this book?"

Genius 1: "Whatever you say Gary."
Genius 2: "Looks good to us Gary."

Gary: "Well, yeah but maybe we should have a few more classes, like figther types, theives and Barbarians."

Genius 3: "That's a great Idea Gary!"
Genius 4: "You're a game designing god Gary!"

Gary: "Yeah, right ok, well then what are we gonna call these classes? 'Bushido' roughly translates into 'way of the warrior', so let's just call the fighters Do's."

Genius 1: "Sounds good to us Gary."
Genius 3: "We'll send it off to publishing right away!"

Gary: "No, wait. What the hell am I thinking? 'Do' means 'Way' or 'Way of', so we call the fighters Bushi, I guess we'll just call the Barbarians...um...Barbarians, gotta have Samurai of Course and then I guess we'll have the wizards called...uh...I dunno, how do you say Wizard or something like wizzard in Japanese or chinese?"

Genius 4: "Whatever you like Gary."
Genius 3: "You da'man Gary!"

Gary: "I think it's Wu-Jin."

Genius 1: "How do you spell that?"

Gary: "I don't care, I was up all night with my gaming group last night, just like every other night of My life since I finished reading Lord of The Rings."

Genius 1: "Don't worry Gary, We'll take care of it."
Genius 2: "Yeah you go get some sleep."
-Gary Leaves-
Genius 3: "So how do we spell it?"
Genius 4: "Here, W-U-Space-J-E-N...there send that off, and have them come up with a few new spells but incorporate most of the old spells from the players handbook."


I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's how it went.


----------



## lukelightning (Oct 19, 2005)

As other's have pointed out, it would be "wuren" in modern Mandarin.  Of course, I've never heard them called "wuren" but only "wu" or "wushi" (what's "wu-shrr" not "wushee"). Or "wupo" which would be more like "witch."

The wu were spirit mediums; they would contact the world of the dead and channel ghosts and gods. They generally weren't thought of a having "active" magic (casting spells to affect things), just spirit communication.

Personally I see no reason why the wu ren class should be anything other than a wizard.  There is no real justification for a separate spell list and spell mechanics other than to feed people's desire for "exotic orient" ideas.  It would be much simpler to call all the wu ren spells wizard spells and say that these are the spells which are common in a fantasy China (there are already far too many categories of spells: bard spells, druid spells, cleric spells, wizard/sorc spells...ad naseum).


----------



## Aaron L (Oct 19, 2005)

Gabriel Stryffe said:
			
		

> Snip large amount of drivel





Wow, could you get any more offensive if you _tried?_  This is pretty disgusting.


----------



## Aus_Snow (Oct 19, 2005)

Gabriel Stryffe said:
			
		

> Gary Gygax and a lot of the other "geniuses" (yeah right) responsible for D&D OA did not do as much -though they did do a considerable amount- research as they could/should have done before the book was released. And the book was targeted at gamers



So. . . kinda like 99% of RPG books, you mean? 




			
				Gabriel Stryffe said:
			
		

> [...] I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's how it went.



Perhaps you should ask certain game designers who on occasion post here? One of them might even know. . .


----------



## Gabriel Stryffe (Oct 19, 2005)

Aaron L said:
			
		

> Wow, could you get any more offensive if you _tried?_  This is pretty disgusting.





Only if you ask nicely


----------



## wuyanei (Oct 19, 2005)

Wu shi (wu1 shi2, or 'wuu shee'): "Of those who can see (commune with) ghosts (spirits of the ancestors), the women are called wu and the men are called shi."

However, as you can see, the right part of the character for 'shi' looks a lot like the character for 'see', which is pronounced 'jien'. 

According to usual chinese pronouncation rules, you often pronounce a word as the non-meaningful part of the character. In this case, left part denotes 'wu' -- the meaning of the character -- so a chinese person who does not actually recognize this (rather uncommon) word, if forced to guess its pronouncation, would likely pronounce it as 'jien'. This is similar to an native English-speaker miss-pronouncing the french name 'Lamer (La mer)' as 'lamer' -- you guessed wrong, because in this case the normal rules do not apply.

My guess is that the designers asked a chinese friend to pronounce the word for them. The friend made a guess according to the usual character pronouncation rules, but in this special case he or she guessed wrong.

I have sent you a private e-mail with a .jpg file of the characters wu and shi, since I do not know how to post images in the forum. If you could post the images here for everyone else -- or even better, teach me how to do so myself, I would be most grateful.

Hope that helps! Bye bye!

Edit: Of course! *Slaps forehead* I forgot that I could just add it as an attachment. File added.


----------



## John Q. Mayhem (Oct 19, 2005)

Nevermind.


----------



## Henry (Oct 19, 2005)

Gabriel Stryffe said:
			
		

> ...So the process of determining what to call the OA wizards went like this...[snip]
> 
> I could be wrong...




You are.


----------



## Shin Okada (Oct 19, 2005)

wuyanei,

Thanks for your mail.

That is another possibility for sure. I know that word because that word was imported into Japan and appear in some of the old Japanese texts. We pronounce it as Fu-geki in Japanese way of reading. Today's pinyin will show it as Wu-xi or Wu-he I guess.

But I am not sure if it is likely for Chinese people to do such way of mispronunciation. In case of the right part of the second character, there are a lot of characters which use that as a part of it (radical) but pronunciation really varies.


----------



## Henry (Oct 19, 2005)

wuyanei said:
			
		

> I have sent you a private e-mail with a .jpg file of the characters wu and shi, since I do not know how to post images in the forum. If you could post the images here for everyone else -- or even better, teach me how to do so myself, I would be most grateful.




That I can help you with.

When you hit the "new reply" button at the bottom of the page, (the "quote" button in each post does this, too!) you will see "additional options below the space for typing your message. Look for the "Attach files" section, and the "Manage attachments" button. A second window should open, with a browse button as well as a path you could type the name of the file you're uploading into. Use the "browse" to find the file to attach on your computer, and then hit the OK button for each one. You can attach up to six files. Hit the "upload" button, and they should upload, to be posted along with your message.

Hope this helps!


----------



## the Jester (Oct 19, 2005)

Gabriel Stryffe said:
			
		

> Only if you ask nicely




Just so you know (in case you haven't read the rules), this sort of behavior is generally frowned on here.  

Please play nice.


----------



## Shin Okada (Oct 19, 2005)

Hmm. And I start to re-think that it actually is posibble that some mistakes are involved.

Many English RPG books say Kensai, while that Japanese word should be alphabetized as Kensei, and shoud be pronounced like "ken" + "say".


----------



## wuyanei (Oct 19, 2005)

While the 'jien' is often used as a radical, it is almost always pronounced as either 'jien' or as 'xian'. Of all the characters withthe 'xi' sound in my dictionary, the 'xi' of 'wu xi' is the ONLY character with the 'see' radical. So I do find it quite possible that a chinese person might misprounounce the word ... especially since I did so myself for a very long time, until I finally looked the character up! 

Anyways, all of this is just speculation. I do not know of any chinese phrase meaning soothesayer/witch/priest that is pronounced like wu jien (although some are close), but I cannot know what the designers were actually thinking. So... please take whatever you useful, and feel free to disregard the rest!

Bye,
Yanei Wu

And... Thank you, Henry. I cannot believe I forgot that we can use attachments. Thanks for reminding me!


----------



## lukelightning (Oct 19, 2005)

In an alternate universe in which D&D was invented in China, there are people wondering where the name of the class "wiz zard" came from in the book "Occidental Adventures."

And fanboys talk about the super-duper claymore sword, and how deadly the "hitman" class is....


----------



## John Q. Mayhem (Oct 19, 2005)

lukelightning said:
			
		

> In an alternate universe in which D&D was invented in China, there are people wondering where the name of the class "wiz zard" came from in the book "Occidental Adventures."
> 
> And fanboys talk about the super-duper claymore sword, and how deadly the "hitman" class is....




You speak beautiful words of truth.


----------



## MaesterOlorin (Jun 19, 2022)

lukelightning said:


> As other's have pointed out, it would be "wuren" in modern Mandarin.  Of course, I've never heard them called "wuren" but only "wu" or "wushi" (what's "wu-shrr" not "wushee"). Or "wupo" which would be more like "witch."
> 
> The wu were spirit mediums; they would contact the world of the dead and channel ghosts and gods. They generally weren't thought of a having "active" magic (casting spells to affect things), just spirit communication.
> 
> Personally I see no reason why the wu ren class should be anything other than a wizard.  There is no real justification for a separate spell list and spell mechanics other than to feed people's desire for "exotic orient" ideas.  It would be much simpler to call all the wu ren spells wizard spells and say that these are the spells which are common in a fantasy China (there are already far too many categories of spells: bard spells, druid spells, cleric spells, wizard/sorc spells...ad naseum).



Ages later a voice in the wilderness said, "romanticization and fetishization, are the heart and lungs of most fantasy, written, games, or movies"


----------



## MaesterOlorin (Jun 19, 2022)

wuyanei said:


> Wu shi (wu1 shi2, or 'wuu shee'): "Of those who can see (commune with) ghosts (spirits of the ancestors), the women are called wu and the men are called shi."
> 
> However, as you can see, the right part of the character for 'shi' looks a lot like the character for 'see', which is pronounced 'jien'.
> 
> ...



That is the kind of sophisticated reasoning you normally only get from a philologist. You really know your stuff and had the creativity to and understanding of how people think to give a real and probable insight. Hope you read this someday; Thank you


----------



## Willie the Duck (Jun 19, 2022)

MaesterOlorin said:


> Ages later a voice in the wilderness said, "romanticization and fetishization, are the heart and lungs of most fantasy, written, games, or movies"



I am curious. You noticed that this is a 17 year old thread. What is your purpose in responding to it?


----------



## Bohandas (Jun 21, 2022)

Is the "wu" part of "wu jen" the same "wu" that also translates as "not applicable"


----------



## Mannahnin (Jun 21, 2022)

MaesterOlorin said:


> Ages later a voice in the wilderness said, "romanticization and fetishization, are the heart and lungs of most fantasy, written, games, or movies"



Ages later, a D&D nerd said, "Gary didn't actually write the book, though his name's on it.  François Marcela-Froideval did the first draft, and David "Zeb" Cook did most of the final writing." 

And that was back in the days when most of their research would have been through the local library (and probably some interlibrary loan).  It was ahead of its time in some ways for 1985, but certainly the scholarship leaves much to be desired when looked at 35+ years later.


----------



## Bohandas (Jul 21, 2022)

I don't know if this is relevant at all but in Martin Palmer's translation of the book of Chuang Tzu there's a character who appears in two of the stories whose name Martin renders as "Wu Jen" (although it's rendered as "Wuren" in Burton Watson's translation)


----------



## MGibster (Jul 21, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> And that was back in the days when most of their research would have been through the local library (and probably some interlibrary loan). It was ahead of its time in some ways for 1985, but certainly the scholarship leaves much to be desired when looked at 35+ years later.



Even in 2022, I don't expect scholarly level research for an RPG book.  Although it's certainly nice when the author has that level of knowledge.


----------



## aramis erak (Jul 27, 2022)

MGibster said:


> Even in 2022, I don't expect scholarly level research for an RPG book.  Although it's certainly nice when the author has that level of knowledge.



While doing some  research for a class in college, I ordered a book via ILL on medieval currency, which was sent from Lake Geneva Public Library, with EG Gygax in the checkout list on the pocket, due back in early 1973... the price list in shillings is the D&D OE price list in GP... 
On the page prior it mentioned that the gold penny (1 dwt of "coin-gold") was worth 10 to 20 silver pennies (1 dwt of coin-silver), depending upon debasement of each.

For reference, coin-gold was often debased with copper and a bit of silver, to about 12 d worth. 

So Gygax did research... just not wide nor careful research.

other fun WTF? bits...

shujenka is a corruption of shugenja those who practice shugendō. Shugendō (修験道) Practitioners are called Shugenja (修験者) or Yamabushi (山伏)

I'll note that AD&D OA as released seemed way more Japanese than Chinese, save for the monsters; I expect wu jen to be a corruption of ___ jin.

(D&D 3.X OA is absolutely more Japanese than Chinese, due to also being a port of L5R's setting.)


----------



## Davies (Jul 28, 2022)

Bohandas said:


> I don't know if this is relevant at all but in Martin Palmer's translation of the book of Chuang Tzu there's a character who appears in two of the stories whose name Martin renders as "Wu Jen" (although it's rendered as "Wuren" in Burton Watson's translation)



Edit: Never mind, that translation only dates from 1996 and can't have been available to Mr. Grubb.


----------

