The official Genshin Impact twitter account had recently done their usual drip marketing and showed off upcoming characters coming to the game, and fans were confused by the familiar spelling but odd pronunciation, Gaming.

At a first glance, people would pronounce the character as it is since it’s a term that everyone knows, but there’s more to it than meets the eye.

According to Twitter user whinnaay, Gaming’s mandarin name is actually 嘉明 which pronounced as “Jia Ming”, but the reason is to why his name is not Jiaming is because it is based on the Cantonese pronunciation “Ga Ming”, which is the main language spoken in Guangdong and Hong Kong.

The main reason, as to why Hoyoverse decided to go for the Cantonese pronunciation rather than the Mandarin pronunciation just like with the other Liyue characters is because of the character being largely influenced by the “Wushou Dance”.

This Wushou Dance that had been mentioned in Gaming’s drip marketing bio, as well as the Lion head charm accessory, which most likely Genshin’s version of the Lion Dance, a traditional dance that’s very common during the Chinese New Year, and is celebrated in areas where Cantonese is the main language spoken.

Hoyoverse chose the way Gaming is stylised falls in line with how the other Chinese characters are named, with it being combined into one word and have no different capitalization, such as Zhongli, Shenhe, Keqing, and so on.

The only instance where this format is different is with Hu Tao and Yun Jin, where Hu and Yun respectively are the family surnames; in which, the “Ga” in “Gaming” is not.

All in all, it just so happens that the combination of the two words in Cantonese is a word that everyone is familiar with.

However, it’s not to say it’s a bad way to market a character considering how trending the character was over on Social Media when he got announced.