Ahead of the highly-awaited release of Genshin Impact’s Snezhnaya region, HoYoVerse recently revealed the Transcendence Trailer “Sudden Snow,” showcasing multiple new characters that are set to appear in the game. This is also the first time we’ve got a glimpse of what the current Cryo Archon and ruler of Snezhnaya looks like.
Going by the name Anastasya Feodorovna Snezhnaya, the ice empress has made quite the stir among Genshin players now that she’s finally appeared, as hints about her presence and role in the story have been scattered throughout the game’s narrative ever since its early days.
Perhaps because her full name is so long, the Japanese Genshin community has already started looking for an appropriate nickname. When it comes to Genshin characters in Japan, they are most often referred to by their first names, hence “Anastasya” being the most common way to call her, followed by the abbreviated nickname “Ana.”
Some people even seem to be calling her “Snezhnaya,” though this might make it easy to mix her up with the actual region in Teyvat. Others call her “Feodorovna,” or even go for more uncommon abbreviations like “Nasu” (from A”nasu”tasia).
Joining in on the search for a “unified” nickname for the Cryo Archon, a few players decided to jokingly abbreviate her name as ー・ー・ー, which ended up sticking around as one of the most popular ones due to just how bizarre it is, even from a Japanese-speaker’s standpoint.
To explain how this nickname even came to be, we need to take a look at the katakana spelling of Anastasya Feodorovna Snezhnaya’s name, which is, アナスターシャ・フョードロヴナ・スネージナヤ. The “nickname” removes all of the katakana from her name, leaving only the three characters resembling a horizontal line (used to mark long vowels) ,and the two middle dots (used for separating foreign names or words in katakana), turning into ー・ー・ー. Since it doesn’t have any actual sounds or syllables in it (represented by the katakana), the nickname cannot actually be pronounced.
Amusingly, due to this nickname looking a bit like morse code, some fans have now started calling Anastasya Feodorovna Snezhnaya just by “sa,” which is how the sequence ー・ー・ー is pronounced in Japanese morse code.
While of course, this is just a product of the fans trying to have some fun while they wait for HoYoVerse to roll out more Snezhnaya content, it will be interesting to see if the community actually decides to embrace the ー・ー・ー, and if the bizarre nickname actually sticks around for longer.
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