#ri jenrya – @earlgreymon on Tumblr

Jianliang is Chinese. Their family is Chinese. That's why they have different names. I think Jenrya is just how the subbers spelled it to have an easier time.

patamon answered:

ah yes. But actually, I would go one step further and say he has roots in Hong Kong*** (trust me, as a person with roots in Hong Kong, I know there is a difference. It's also very political, the entire Hong Kong/China dynamic). His father is from Hong Kong and his mother is Japanese. I think (could be wrong) that the characters/kanjis for Jianliang in Chinese translates to Japanese as Jenrya. And the literal English translation for Jianliang is Henry and that's how we ended up with Henry/Jianliang/Jenrya

But it's curious because Jianliang doesn't sound Cantonese, which is strange because Jianliang's dad is supposedly from Hong Kong. It actually sounds more Mandarin, so perhaps Jianliang's dad was originally from mainland China and moved to Hong Kong but speaks mostly Mandarin? If you look at Jianliang's siblings name, they all sound Mandarin as well (Shaochung, Jaarin, Rinchei)

Oh look at me headcanon-ing Jenrya's background lol

Anyways, don't usually answer asks publicly but posting it in case I am like very very wrong about Jianliang translating to Jenrya and I need to be corrected lol (perhaps @earlgreymon would know)

earlgreymon

thanks for tagging me, @patamon! i know i am probably not the biggest jenrya's fan around, but i always love talking about him!

disclaimer: my japanese sucks and i quit my chinese lesson after barely 3 months (and it's mandarin anyway, not cantonese), so i can be very wrong. i believe bree is the expert when it comes to jenrya's hongkong heritage. (also, love the headcanon—could probably use it on future fics 🙌)

perhaps what i can add is the characters for 健良 (jianliang) in chinese hanzi doesn't translate to jenrya in japanese kanji. in fact, i can show that if you put 健良 in google translate and translate them from japanese, they will say that it is kenryou instead.

so why was his name jenrya on the japanese dub?

it's simple: because that's how japanese people heard the way jianliang is pronounced. it's the same case with "soccer" becomes sakka (no, not the one from avatar) or computer becomes konpyuuta.

i think even in the chinese, the pronunciation for jianliang is jen-lya(ng) with a rather vague ng in the end (you can use google translate to listen). with foreign words/names, japanese writes them down what they've heard in katakana characters, in which the characters were pretty limited. japanese characters don't have an L, so they always use R.

and there you have it: ri jenrya (リー・ジェンリャ). and yes, they wrote his name in katakana, while the other tamers use kanji like most japanese names (takato is 啓人 and ruki is 留姫). the same thing happens to jenrya's sister: the chinese transcript is shaochung, but japanese heard, wrote, and pronounced it as shiuchon.

so basically, there's a lot of ways you can call the guy on my current profile picture:

li jianliang
ri jenrya
henry wong
...and some other names from the other dub which i haven't had the moment to curate them all. (i already did for adventure, btw)

but of course, the choice is yours :) i started my journey into digimon fandom through fanfiction.net, and as you can probably see, the character tag for this guy is "Jenrya L." (yes, not "Jenrya R.") and then the wikimon wrote "Lee Jenrya" as his japanese name. that's how i ended up tagging him #jenrya lee.

#digimon #jenrya lee #ri jenrya #li jianliang #henry wong #this blog needs more jenrya #god i have been waiting for the weekend just to write this #i hope my sensei and my laozi proud of me lmao #also i studied jenrya's name thoroughly because i once had an oc on roleplay named jenrya HEHE