Talk:Takeshi Kovacs

Referencing

You know, it's pretty lame for this article to be tagged for lack of references, when the article is explicitly and clearly about a character from a series of novels that are all listed. why isn't that reference enough?

Because one could just make the entire article up.–Skomorokh 03:15, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

You're kidding, right? Had me going there for a moment, Skomorokh! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.153.180.229 (talk) 17:46, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

So at least put the novel as the reference - formally. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 09:38, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Subject of Article

This article seems to be more about the world that Kovacs lives in rather than about Kovacs himself. Whislt the technology and politics of the Protectorate universe are facinating, perhaps they should be placed in another article to allow this one to focus on Kovacs, his history, abilites, personality etc.

I'm going to try and put together a slightly more focused version of this article, if no-one objects WikkiSpiff 11:35, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Good stuff, WikkiSpiff - I like what you've done. Ossipewsk 03:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Merge

I removed the merge tag: Quellchrist Falconer is a completely different person. · AndonicO ^Talk 14:46, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Errors in article

The final paragraph ought to be removed. It's not about Kovacs, it's about Envoy deployment generally. More importantly, it talks about physical attributes of an Envoy's body (e.g. neurachem) when actually, the whole point of the books is that the body is just a skin, so it may not have any of those enhancements at all.

Like the first poster said, the main problem with this article is it looks like unverifiable original research - it's one person's view of Takeshi Kovacs. It would be better content (and less likely to contain errors) if cross referenced to professional reviews or a fansite.

It looks like a few assumptions have been made in these articles about the Altered Carbon universe, about things that are not explicitly stated in the text and which could be interpreted otherwise. See my edit / note about ancestry and the "cite needed" I'm about to add to the Altered Carbon article. Stroller (talk) 11:02, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Ancestry & Origin of Kovacs name

Article stated that Kovacs was "half-Japanese, half-Eastern European" - I don't believe that is ever stated in the books. Born a century or two years after the colonisation of Harlan's World it seems unlikely that his genetics would be so clearly 50/50. His name clearly indicates some Central- or Eastern-European on one side of his family, and one would tend to assume that his heritage is mixed, but who knows. An oriental "tech ninja" sleeve is once described as being exactly the kind of sleeve he, as a teenager on the Newpest streets, dreamed of one day wearing, but perhaps he aspired to this for the very reason that he was entirely caucasian himself? Let's not conjecture in the article! Stroller (talk) 11:02, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Also, I've moved this previous comment from the "referencing" section of this page:

I'm confused. Kovacs is not a Hungarian last name, it's in fact Slovenian by origin. (As for how I know, I'm Croatian with Slovenian roots) Also, the books clearly state Kovacs is partly Eastern European. Hungary is not a part of Eastern Europe. And his middle name is Lev - this is a Russian/Slavic name. Hungarian language belongs to entirely different linguistic family, they would not be using the name Lev but rather a Hungarian variant.

That comment was made by 81.152.212.22, who also provided this edit.

Anyone able to provide more info on this, please? I've just reverted an edit which claimed Kovacs to have Hungarian descent - perhaps that was hasty of me, but I just want someone to provide accurate information, untainted by nationalism. This page gives some explanation on the name's origins, as does this one; I suspect the author did not really intend to be so specific. 81.152.212.22 claims that Kovacs is stated to be Eastern European or Slavic - I don't recall this from the books (halfway through Angels at the moment). Stroller (talk) 03:16, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Clarification from a Hungarian speaker: Kovacs means smith in Hungarian. This word originally comes to Hungarian from neighbouring Slavic languages that use the same pronounciation, however, the spelling "Kovacs" is distinctively Hungarian. No Slavic languages would use the "cs" spelling for that sound. Slavic languages would spell it Kovac, with various signs on top of the "c". Of course this does not mean Kovacs is necessarily of Hungarian origin - the name sounds like a mixture of things, e.g. "Lev" is not a name in Hungary. Nor is Takeshi, of course. Kaa (talk) 16:28, 5 July 2010 (UTC)—Preceding unsigned comment added by Kaa (talk • contribs) 16:23, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Kovac is definitely not a name of Slovenian origin. Word "kovač" means Blacksmith in Serbo-Croatian and the last name Kovač is as much Slovenian (or maybe less then) as it is Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Hungarian etc. As the spelling in this case is Kovacs, and if there are no references to Takeshi beign half-slavic in the books, we should consider Kovacs last name as Hungarian. Also Lev is a common slavic name (in ex-soviet union states). Im writing this as a Croatian, so you dont think Im being biased. Also his fathers name is JAKUB, might be bosnian as jakub is a common name in bosnia, stands for jacob — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lukaakul (talk • contribs) 21:42, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Just a note I am hungarian and Kovács IS a hungarian name and it means Smith. The surrounding countries have this name, mostly in croatia feom the time of historical Hungary. It is not for debate. But his parents might not be hungarian, however he surly is fron hungarian heritage even it is a grear-great-great-great-...-parent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.115.129.230 (talk) 23:47, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Hello fellow readers,

Kovacs is actually hungarianized word from slavic (I believe Slovak) word Kováč (pron. Kovatch). It means blacksmith in slavic languages while also it is the second most common surname in Slovakia. As someone said his father was Jakub which makes even more sense then because Jakub is very common name in Slovakia. I believe author created the name without knowing much about slavic names because Lev is not Slovak at all, much more ex-soviet. Hope I contributed.

Err, no, that's nonsense, it's not "hungarianized" - that is an entirely different thing - but simply it is the Hungarian last name, with its very distinctive Hungarian spelling, the digraph 'cs' which is unique to Hungarian, as someone above already correctly pointed this out - so much so that all surrounding Slavic languages in fact use a different writing-spelling despite both Czech and Slovakian have their own digraphs (I also recall Croatian and Serbian using digraphs.) Yes, it is most likely of Slavic origin but that's not surprising as most of the surrounding territories were one way or another part of Hungary from the ~9th century until 1920. (Eg Slovakia where this last name is probably one of the most common one, just like in Hungary - or Smith in English, accordingly -, never existed as a country before its 1992 split from Czechoslovakia.) Not only that but Kovacs was born in Newpest (Harlan World) which is the direct translation of Újpest, the of name of the northernmost (4th) district on the Pest side of Budapest. I think it is pretty clear that his name shows Hungarian roots though it's never been clear to what extent. Szlevi (talk) 00:36, 27 January 2020 (UTC) (PS: I'm a native speaker.)

As I can see that the spelling of his surname has already been discussed at length, I would just like to confirm that Newpest is literally the english translation of the name of a district of Budapest, Újpest, with új meaning new in Hungarian. With that being said, as it has been pointed out above it is really far-fetched to think about his ancestry as clearly one or the other. For all we know the differences between ethnicities just got so blurred that the spelling of surnames became uniform, and this version of Kovač/Kováč/Kovács was used because this way there was no need to add an extra letter to a commonly used alphabet. The more likely scenario is that the author himself only used this spelling for that very reason.

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