Why "God Hand" and not "Godhand"
Added 2021-11-17 12:01:02 +0000 UTCYou know what really grinds my gears? People who don't write proper nouns properly. Well, it doesn't actually bother me all that much but I needed an excuse to talk about this topic so here we are.
In Japanese, God Hand is written in Katakana: ゴッド・ハンド. That is why it should be "God Hand" in every language, and not "Main de Dieu" in French, "Mano de Dios" in Spanish or "Gott Hand" in German.
You'll notice that little ・ here (called 中黒, nakaguro), which is used to separate words when inserted in Katakana. It isn't mandatory in Japanese, where you could write something in Katakana without separation that would become two words in English. But the fact Miura chose to write the word like that indicates with absolute certainty that it's meant to be two separate words: God Hand.
By the way, if you check the first few instances of word, you'll notice it's written in-between quotation marks, like so “ゴッド・ハンド”. These Western-style quotation marks (called 引用符, inyoubu) can be used for emphasis, for metaphors, or to denote coined words. They are subsequently dropped in volume 3 for God Hand, but are used for many other words and expressions throughout the series.
