#tanjokes

WAIT IT IS 

Hey more birthday puns, let’s talk about those so I don’t have to think about the devastated mess this arc has made of my heart.

Law’s is really simple, it’s just from his name (which is written in Japanese as トラファルガーロー/torafarugaa rō). ト/to is a reading of 10 and ロ/ro is the start of 6/roku, so October 6th.

Blackbeard’s comes from his devil fruit (the yami yami no mi). Ya is a reading of 8 and mi is a reading of 3, so 8/3. This one gets bonus points because it actually shows up in one of the cup noodle commercials, if I remember right.

Marco’s comes from the phrase ‘1st Division Commander Marco’ (1番隊隊長マルコ/ichibantai taichou maruko), because マル/maru is the Japanese word for circle and you can get a reading for 5 out of コ/ko. So that plus the ‘1’ from ‘1st Division’ gives you 105 > 10/5.

Crocodile’s is also from his name- クロコダイル/kurokodairu. Ku is 9 and ko is the same slightly messed-up reading of 5 as from Marco’s one. 

I can’t remember if I ever mentioned that almost all the birthdays in One Piece are number puns, but they are. Basically: most number kanji in Japanese have approximately a bazillion ways they can be read depending on the situation, so if you’re bound and determined, you can wrangle a number out of almost any word or name by finding sounds in it that match with a certain number.

So here’s the birthdays of the Water 7/CP9 folks! They’re all number puns except for Kalifa’s (hers is Administrative Professionals Day).

Iceburgs comes from アイス/aisu, the first half of his name. Since アイ/ai sounds like the English letter ‘I’ and ‘I’ looks like the number 1, he’s January. Meanwhile we get ‘3′ from ス/su (I'm still not fully sure why on that particular one, actually?) for 1/3.

Franky’s birthday comes from the first and last sounds of the word サイボーグ/saibougu (cyborg). サ/sa is one of the most common readings of ‘three,’ while グ/gu can be interpreted as a rendaku’d ク/ku, which is ‘nine.’ So 3/9

Paulie’s birthday is from the word 縄/nawa (rope). な/na is from one of the most common readings of 'seven', and 'eight' is frequently read as は/ha which is in turn frequently pronounced as wa- so 7/8.

Lucci's just comes from ロブ/robu, the katakana version of his name 'Rob.' ロ/ro is from the most common reading of 'six' and ブ/bu again can be interpreted as a rendaku, in this case of フ/fu which is a reading for 'two.' 6/2.

More birthdays!! 

Coby’s is gotten by writing his name as こB (ko-B). If you add a rendaku to こ/ko then it becomes ご/go, which is the primary reading for the number five, and then the English letter B kinda looks like 13, so 5/13.