4Game

Well, there's no doubt that I'm super excited about the new Japanese tank, but at the same time there's one thing that's not good about this.

As pointed out here, The name Ho-To in real life belongs to a SPG with a 12cm howitzer, which looks nothing like this Frankenstein’s monster made up by WG. I have no idea why WG thought to use such a confusing name, but in any case, Ho-To is definitely an inappropriate name so I tried to come up with something better.

– Ho-Ri V or Ho-Ri X

Personally, I think the name “Ho-Ri III” should best be avoided because it would be a bit misleading. V and X sound kinda wacky and unreal so it would be easier for people to tell it is a made-up tank.

– Ho-Wa, Ho-Ka, Ho-Yo……

The naming convention for Japanese TDs during the war was to put one character in “I-Ro-Ha” order (an old way to arrange Japanese alphabet) after “Ho” as in “Hou (gun)”. So it goes Ho-I, Ho-Ro, Ho-Ha (shit, this one is an APC), Ho-Ni and so on, and Ho-Ru was the last one planned during the war. Following alphabets “Wo, Wa, Ka, Yo…” are therefore not used. So if there had been more TDs planned, they would have naturally been named Ho-Wo, Ho-Wa, Ho-Ka and so on. “Wo” is kind of a special character in Japanese though, so it should be skipped (It is like an ASCII control character). Also, unconventionally there is already a APC called “Ho-Ki” so it should be minded.

– Ka-Ri

This is a twist on the “I-Ro-Ha” stuff I mentioned above. Other than TDs with names that start with Ho like Ho-I and Ho-Ri, there is another TD called Ka-To. If there had been a tank to follow this Ka-To it would have been called Ka-Chi, but Ka-Chi is actually the name of an amphibious tank belonging to the navy, so let’s skip that. Going down the I-Ro-Ha order, it would then be Ka-Ri. There is a slight concern that Ka-Ri sounds the same as the Japanese word “kari (tentative)” but it shouldn’t be a big deal.

– Ka-Te

Let’s put a further twist on Ka-Ri. I mentioned a tank belonging to the navy, and the gun on this “Ho-To” happens to be a naval gun. So it would be interesting to set Ho-To up as a navy’s tank. The Japanese navy had tanks called Ka-Mi, Ka-Chi, Ka-Tsu and Toku, but let’s focus on Ka-Chi and Ka-Tsu here. In Gojyuonjyun order, which is a different way to arrange Japanese alphabet, "chi" (ti) is followed by "tsu" (tu). The one following "tsu" is "te", so Ka-Te would be authentic. Incidentally Ka-Te sounds like the word “Kate (to win)”, or even “Katee! (bloody tough armor!)”.

– Ni-Na

Apparently, Na-To and Ka-To are originally names of the guns, and people eventually started to call the tanks armed with those guns by these names. Considering that, taking 2 (pronounced "ni" in Japanese) and 7 ("nana") from the 127mm gun on “Ho-To” and calling it Ni-Na sounds authentic enough too. Among the names I listed here, I think this one calls for affection the most.

What do you guys think?