Hey random question that I’m curious about. Obviously most of the mercs are named after what they do… ie arty for artillery, proxy for proximity mines, nader for grenades, etc. even more liberal names like skyhammer and rhino are still references to how the merc plays / what the merc does.
Which I guess brings me to vasilli and kira. are these names a reference to anything I’m not seeing? Does anyone know?
Vassili probably takes his name from Vasily Zaytsev, sniper and Hero of the Soviet Union.
Kira, I have no idea. I heard some people mentioning references to Akira, but Japanese manga aren’t my field.
Kira: If it is repeated as “kira kira” (キラキラ) or written with Yōon (キラッ), it could be the onomatopoeia of the state of shining. (Pulled from Yahoo Answers.) Also kira in Japanese is often used for ‘killer.’
Vasilli: It sounds very similar to Vaseline. And considering how Vasilli game play can be considered banal… Banal Vasilli… does it really have to be explained any further? Cough.
Vasilli for reals: Vasilli, Vasili, Wassili, are related to the Old Greek word Basil which apparently means: royal, kingly. (Yanked from babynamepedia) Now let us assume that the player behind the Vasilli merc is very good and that he or she is constantly getting those kills. Thus a lot of kills, very few deaths, and in online FPS games that usually makes the player ‘kingly.’ I do not think it has been used in decades, but the best kill death ratio used to make you the king of the server.
Now, the above are just speculation. But does it help?
Also think Kira is taken from how Japanese translates the sound of “Killer” into “Kira”. Even though the real translation for killer is 殺人者 : satsujinsha (satsu jin sha) or 殺し屋 : koroshiya (koro shi ya).
Kira is also just a common Japanese name or if written as kirakira it has the meaning of shining as Monty mentioned.
Personally have no clue about how they came up with the name vassili.
[quote=“ghostBase;57208”]Kira is sanskrit and means “beam of light”… yeah.
[/quote]
I doubt they used sanskrit for a Japanese character lol.
I doubt they used sanskrit for a Japanese character lol.[/quote]
Well it’s the most befitting translation if you ask me. They didn’t call Nader “Grenadier” as well.
ah well the kira makes more sense when you claim it translates to beam of light. also i guess it does sound like a japanese person off the boat trying to say ‘killer’ LOL.
vassilli still a mystery, but i guess paying homage to a real life sniper would make sense, if they didn’t want to call him snipo, or 300yards, or who the fuck just shot my face off or something
Not much of a mistery as GregHouseMD pointed out Vassili is the name of a famous soviet sniper in WW2.
Because of that vassili is a fairly common nickname, sniper players name themself in games. Especially in WW2 shooters but it shows up in other games aswell. Some taunts of Vassili suggest that he is one of those L33t Sniperkids (he says he misses only because of lag for example) that became a sniper for real (and not any sniper but the most sniperest sniper that is better at sniping than any other sniper 
).
If u ask me i think Vasilli relates to Vascular as in heart & vascular system since he has a HEARTBEAT sensor which detects cough heart beats
That would be my guess since each of their nicknames relate to their ability
