What does Genshin Impact Actually Mean in Chinese?

What does Genshin Impact actually mean? This game has a pretty large amount of dialogue in it across  the various cutscenes, character stories, and voice lines, but we never actually see  “Genshin Impact” said in any of these. 

Now, this is not THAT unusual for games, I mean,  I don’t remember reading “The Legend of Zelda” in any games from the series. But the thing is,  even in games like that, the player knows what the title means and understands how  it relates to the game itself. Whereas in genshin impact, we are left completely in the dark. Well,  I’ve done some research, and I will try my best to explain its meaning.The word “Genshin” is taken from the Japanese language. 

It’s not really a japanese word  necessarily, it simply combines the kanji for original and god. When read together,  it is pronounced Genshin. Yep, so the accurate pronunciation is technically Genshin, but I  honestly think that Genshin sounds a lot more natural when speaking English and not Japanese.  So now you might be thinking: “Wait, isn’t MiHoYo a Chinese company?” Yes, they are, but the  Chinese and Japanese language are similar in that Japanese Kanji are taken from Chinese. Therefore,  these characters also mean original god in chinese, but it is instead pronounced Yuán shén.  So why did MiHoYo decide to take the Japanese name over the Chinese name? 

Interestingly, they did the  same thing with their previous game, Honkai Impact 3rd, albeit with a slight alteration.  My two theories are that either a. Japanese words are simply easier to say for English speakers,  or more likely b. Japanese is more “familiar” to a global audience due to the popularity of anime. Ok, now that you kinda have an idea of the origin behind the word, what does it mean in terms of  the game? 

To answer this, I’ll be going to look into the Japanese translation of the game. What  I’m going to talk about also mostly applies to the native Chinese translation,  I just happen to be more familiar with Japanese. In the Japanese version, the naming convention  for the most important in-universe terms revolves around the character for god,  read as kami when it's by itself. Vision is “Kami no me,” directly translating to eye of god.  Gnosis is “kami no kokoro,” directly translating to heart of God. As you would expect, the anemo  archon is “kaze no kami,” god of wind. The God of Salt from Zhongli’s story quest is a bit  different in that it is “shio no majin,” which is an example of how gods that aren’t the 7 archons  are considered demons. This is something which is completely lost in translation to English.  That brings us to Genshin, which is translated in English as Allogene. 

You might not even remember  that word because it was mentioned once by Venti at the end of the game’s Mondstadt chapter,  but it refers to anybody that owns a Vision. These people have the potential to ascend to godhood.  Knowing this, a better translation for Genshin, might be “Proto-god,” because it is referring to  the lowest form of a god. Yep, that means that the characters you play as and wish for are Genshin,  with the exception of the 7 Archons and the Traveler. I actually think Allogene is a very  good translation of Genshin, as the word refers to a half-human, half-divine. 

So why isn’t the game  localized as “allogene?” Well, it is very likely that it is simply due to trademark licensing. One more thing I thought i’d mention real quick is that Genshin was the name of a well  known Japanese Buddhist priest of the Tendai sect. To VERY briefly summarize his beliefs,  he was an advocate for meditative nembutsu, which would bring about enlightenment in the present  life and rebirth in the Pure Land, basically a paradise of gods and men. While this can relate  to the game, namely Celestia, the divine realm above gods, I don’t think it’s as relevant.

Alright, how about the second half of the game’s title? I looked all over for what  the significance for impact could be, in both Genshin and Honkai, but I found nothing. In the  Asian versions of the game, there isn’t even a second word present. Without any evidence,  here’s my assumptions for what it could mean.iven the definition: noun. A forceful contact  or onset, impact might have been tacked on to give the audience the impression that these are  action focused games, which makes sense since Honkai Impact 3rd is a beat-em-up style game. The 2nd definition of Impact is noun. The force of impression of one thing on another:  a significant or major effect. In Honkai Impact 3rd, a Honkai is a catastrophic event,  which would obviously have huge “impacts”. 

The word was then borrowed and put on Genshin possibly  because they share the same multiverse, or to let players know they are both games by MiHoYo. Once again using the 2nd definition, the “impacts” could be the impressions that  the main characters of the games leave on other characters and the whole world.Well, that’s all for my findings. I could be spot on, or I could be completely off,  who knows. Anyways, thank you for watching.