#ania

It's not a secret that Anya's (Ania) name change was officialized along with Loid (Lloyd) and Yor (Yoru/Yolanda) in July 2019. I do recall that our loveable Forger family had different spellings in the early manga releases. Many believed that it was Endo-san's way to cover up the spelling mistake, but I believe that, whether or not the origin and/or intention was a mistake, it paved a beautiful opportunity for a deep dive into linguistics and character analysis on Anya Forger.

First, I'd like to address my thoughts on "ANIA" as the spelling. Here are a few of my impressions on this:

"ANIA" could be perceived as her original spelling because wherever she came from used this spelling.

"ANIA" could just be her limitation as a child when it came to spelling her name.

"ANIA" could be an acronym from her lab that probably served the purpose of her existence.

"ANIA" could be the name of her mother/creator. And she was subjected to share the same name of her creator for "sourcing" purposes.

"ANIA" when applied to numerology number, reinforced her code name which is 007 (which is super meta to me, but probably is a coincidence because we all know 007 was Endo's way of referencing James Bond). S/O to @momentocollector for sharing this!

Second, I'd like to address "ANIA" as an identity for our precious baby girl.

"Ania" is the chosen spelling. This could possibly mean that this is her real name and how it should be spelled (You, as the owner of your name have every right to decide what your name should be, spelled, or pronounced after all).

"Ania" could possibly be an influence of either her mother-tongue language's spelling.

"Ania" could possibly be due to her limitation of spelling. (I don't think she is aware of how her name should be spelled.)

Recall that Yor carved out Anya's name as "Ania" and didn't question it. This could be a reflection of Yor's own lack of familiarity of Ostanian orthography since she is academically limited, and she would have listened to how Anya would have wanted her name to be spelled. Furthermore, this tells me that Yor's absence of questioning reflects that she accepts her daughter no matter who she is, be it "Ania" or "Anya".

Third, I'd like to address "ANYA" as her name's spelling.

"A-N-Y-A" is the spelling that her papa gave her, which tells her that she can now be on the same playing field as her parents. Their names and titles are all "masks" in this masquerade that they call "Forger". So, to little Anya, it means that she finally belongs with someone. Anya has essentially found "her home".

We also know that Franky did do a lot of paperwork and found that "Anya" is the spelling that was written down on her adoption papers. This reinforces that "Anya" is the standard Ostanian orthography of her name.

I perceive Loid as a person replicating the "average Ostanian" (since this is a deep cover mission after all), so to also tell her that her name is spelled a certain way reinforces that she has a new identity as an "Ostanian child". (I find this quite ironically poetic because it's a "fake man" giving a "fake name" to his "fake daughter").

I also see that when Anya's eyes light up, it could also mean that this new identity in her spelling change meant she was finally liberated from her days as a lab experiment and living in an orphanage.

Fourth, I'd like to address spelling etymology.

Since I'm not a Japanese linguist expert, I found @connoisseursdecomfort post to be quite educational when it came to Japanese spelling.

What we learn from the above post is that "Ania" is an acceptable name spelling in "Old Japanese". But as time progressed, the spelling changed to "Anya" which is the modern-day spelling of this name (this may tie into Anya's character lore).

We can track "i" becomes "y" in the evolution of the alphabet from Phoenician (c. 1000 BC) to Archaeic Greek (c. 750 BC). S/O to @rachellysebrook for this link. (Again, what this reinforces is Anya's background with an unidentified mother country/mother tongue language).

Another thing is that Yor Forger did not react to the spelling of "Ania". It could possibly be that she recognized Anya's limitation, given that her daughter already had poor scores since her admission.

We also learned that Yor, a real Ostanian, seems to be limited with Ostanian orthography which is most likely due to her dropping out of school to take care of Yuri (fake Ostanian /j). From her interaction with Anya, off-screen, it appears that Yor seems indifferent to spelling standards of names (Which is nice! She is subtly against society's norm and I love her for that). Had she been aware of the spelling, she would have been the one to ask instead of Loid. (But again, it must be Loid because it's poetic and has a much more meaningful interaction between "Loid" and "Anya").

Fifth, I'd like to address the name's (possible) impact on character purpose in the story.

"Anya" means mother in Hungarian (S/O to @httplovecraft1890. This inspired my thoughts on "Ania" as a name in the lab). Could this possibly be an inspiration or coincidence? It could be a stretch, but perhaps Anya's purpose in the lab is that she's a "mother weapon" for war.

"Ania" means "gracious" and "merciful" according to Google. Which makes me think that the lab scientists went with this name because it would represent her purpose as a weapon of war. Perhaps Ania becomes the "truth serum" and could be seen as the "angel of death" because she knows the war captor's thoughts and inevitably they are executed (a possible headcanon).

Sixth, I'd like to discuss the factors of the mysterious "unidentified language".

Anya did use "oui" in the anime when Loid had adopted her. This automatically made me think her possible origins could be French, but it could also take another step back in the language family: Romance. What makes this work is that we treat "Classical Language" as a dead language based on what we read/saw in the manga/anime like Latin. Anya has an innate potential to be bi-/multilingual.

Bonus: Seventh, I'd like to talk about the languages in this anime (This is a bit of a ramble but since we're talking about linguistics, I thought why not)...

Based on the dialogues spoken in the anime, we can confirm that English exclamatory (Oh my God, Goddammit, Shit, Wow, Elegant, etc.) and the Japanese language are the main components of the Ostanian language. This is reinforced by many characters who have used English expressions (Loid, Yuri, Yor, Anya, Damian, Henderson, etc.)

What does bug me is whether or not "oui", a French exclamatory, should be categorized as part of the Ostanian language or if that should be categorized for Anya's hidden lore. The reason is that when Loid/Twilight heard Anya say "oui" in front of him, he did not question it. (Perhaps he was too tired to process this, or he excused it as something Anya could have seen on TV and is merely mimicking. I really don't think Twilight would be the type to excuse this realization had he not had the aforementioned state of mind). I'm leaning more towards the latter as this is from Anya's mother tongue language.

In conclusion (or tldr;): "Ania" may be her real name, but "Anya" is her new identity as part of the Forgers.