Alex Glover, in his translation of the Stars story of the manga,
originally wrote the name of the maneuver as “Galactica Musotis Alpastonis.” Understandably, he did not know what the name signified at the time, so
he also added “[???].” Later, he realized that the name looked rather like a Japanese approximation of the binomial nomenclature of the Alpine Forget-Me-Not,
Myos
tis alpestris2. The name refers specifically to the Alpine Forget-Me-Not, not simply “an alpine species of the forget-me-not flower,” as some sources say. Incidentally, the Alpine Forget-Me-Not is Alaska’s state flower
3. Sailor Lethe is the protector of the river of forgetfulness on her planet Lethe, and it appears that the name of her maneuver refers to the Alpine Forget-Me-Not. Perhaps the name has to do with Sailor Lethe’s ability to make her victims forget their pasts, and her apparent desire to tell her victims that they should not forget her powers.
The people at Tokyo Pop (also known as Mixx), in their English-language adaptation of the Bish
jo Senshi S
r
M
n manga, wrote Sailor Lethe’s maneuver as “Galactica Myusotis Alpastnis”4. I once searched for “Myusotis Alpastnis” at Google and that search engine asked me, “Did you mean: ‘Myosotis Alpestris’”!
If Naoko Takeuchi really did have the name Myos
tis alpestris in mind, then her way of approximating the name of the binomial nominclature is unusual. Why is there no katakana character that represents the first o in Myos
tis? The characters
myu look as if they represent myu or mu instead of myo. Also, why is there no katakana character that represents the ri in alpestris? It looks as if the
ni in
should have been a
ri.
Some may suggest that the unusual spelling can be explained by saying that the katakana characters represent a pun. If it were really a pun, though, on what word or words is it a pun? What would Ms. Takeuchi hope to accomplish by changing some of the sounds in the name? Not all unusual spellings are puns. It is not really enough simply to take a word, randomly change some of the letters or characters that represent that word, and claim truthfully that it is a pun. A pun has to do with a play on words, not simply an unusual way to write a word5. There is really nothing that suggests that Ms. Takeuchi had anything else in mind besides the binominal nominclature when she wrote the name of the maneuver.
One particular Japanese source that lists the names of certain flowers and plants shows “
” to represent the name Myos
tis alpestris. That combination of katakana characters looks similar to what Ms. Takeuchi wrote, but it is more phonetically accurate to Myos
tis alpestris:

Notice the differences between the two versions. Ms. Takeuchi’s version contains two long vowels, while the other version has none. There seems to be a
o missing from Ms. Takeuchi’s version. There is a
ni in Ms. Takeuchi’s version, but there is a
ri in the other version. Everything else is the same. Although there are differences, the similarities are too great to explain by coincidence.
Some fans may wonder what the name Myos
tis alpestris means. It would then be a good idea to explain the origin of that name. The term myos
tis literally means mouse ear, but it refers to a kind of plant6. The Latin-letter spelling myos
tis comes from the Greek spelling, which is
. Botanist today use the term Myos
tis as the genus name for the forget-me-not flowers7. So, in the name Myos
tis alpestris, the term Myos
tis refers to a forget-me-not. Alpestris is really made up of two elements: alp and estris8. The first part, alp, is a Latin stem that refers to low mountains in general, and the Alps in particular. The second part, estris, comes from ester, which is an adjectival suffix for nouns. The suffix refers to an origin or a habitat9.
According to the Japanese source, Myos
tis can be approximated by
Myuosotisu, and alpestris is approximated by
arupesutorisu.
Myos
tis is the Latin spelling of the Greek letters
. The katakana characters
myu represent the Greek letters Mu (
) and Upsilon (
). The
(small yu) is often used to approximate the Upsilon in Greek terms when the Upsilon appears after a Greek consonant letter. We can see that happening in the Japanese approximations of the names Mnemosyne (
10), Tethys (
11), and Cyrene (
12):
Munemoshune13,
Tetyusu14,
Kyurene15.
So, why do the combinations 

Myus
tisu Arup
sutonisu. appear in the manga? There are several possibilities, and here are three of them:
1. Her original source (which was probably a Japanese-language book
on plants) really did show the katakana characters 

Myus
tisu Arup
sutonisu. Perhaps that source’s typists meant to write 

Myuos
tisu Arup
sutorisu, but they made typos. If Ms. Takeuchi did not intend to alter the binomial nomenclature, then the maneuver name is likely to be Galactica Myos
tis Alpestris (Galactica Myosotis Alpestris).
2. She originally meant to write 

Myuos
tisu Arup
sutorisu or some other variation that closely approximates Myos
tis alpestris, but when Kodansha was preparing the Bish
jo Senshi S
r
M
n manga volume seventeen, the editors misread Ms. Takeuchi’s handwriting.
3. She deliberately wrote 

Myus
tisu Arup
sutonisu for some reason. If she did write the name like that deliberately, it would have been nice if she indicated why. She does not give us any other hints.
If 

Myus
tisu Arup
sutonisu was intended, and it came from 

Myosotisu arupesutorisu, what Roman-letter spelling would it be approximating? We can use the 

Myosotisu arupesutorisu and the name Myosotis alpestris to help us come up with a Roman-letter spelling for 

Myus
tisu Arup
sutonisu.
Myos
tis alpestris is a Latin phrase, and macrons over Roman letters can indicate long vowels, so a Roman-letter spelling of 

Myus
tisu Arup
sutonisu can contain vowels with macrons. (It is best for a Roman-letter spelling of 

Myus
tisu Arup
sutonisu that is based on Myos
tis alpestris to follow Latin rules because Myos
tis alpestris is the original form of the name in Roman letters.) 

Myus
tisu Arup
sutonisu does not have the
o in 

Myosotisu arupesutorisu. Logically, the
o in
Myuosotisu approximates the first o in Myos
tis. The
in
Myus
tisu means that the vowel sound of
so is supposed to be long. Notice that the s
in Myos
tis, which is what the
so in
Myosotisu approximates, is long even though some people do not indicate that. The change from
Myuosotisu to
Myus
tisu is likely to indicate that we should lengthen the o after the s in Myos
tis, but it is already long. Latin does not use a special character that represents an even longer o, so the best we can work with is the
. Removing the
o in
Myosotisu and making the
so part long to get
Myus
tisu is analogous to removing the o after the y in Myos
tis and leaving the o after the s long to get Mys
tis. (If we do not wish to indicate long vowels, we can write Mysotis.)

The the vowel of
pe in
Arup
sutonisu is long, but the vowel of
pe in
arupesutorisu is short. Although 
p
can approximate pa (p with the English long a sound) in some cases, that does not necessarily mean that the difference between
arupesutorisu and
Arup
sutonisu indicates that the
pe in the former approximates pe while the 
p
in the latter approximates pa. The change in vowel letters is unnecessary because we already know where the e came from and nothing specifically indicates an a. That 
p
can simply approximate a long e in this case.
Arup
sutonisu contains a
ni, but
arupesutorisu contains a
ri. One combination of Roman letters in Latin is closest to what the
ni represents: ni. Making the
pe in
arupesutorisu long and changing the
ri to
ni to get
Arup
sutonisu is analogous to making the pe in alpestris long and changing the ri to ni to get Alp
stnis (or alpestnis if we do not wish to indicate long vowels).

If 

Myosotisu arupesutorisu approximates Myos
tis alpestris, then 

Myus
tisu Arup
sutonisu most likely approximates Mys
tis Alp
stnis (Mysotis Alpestnis without macrons). In that case, the maneuver’s name would be Galactica Mys
tis Alp
stnis (Galactica Mysotis Alpestnis).
The Tokyopop spelling of the name is “Myusotis Alpastnis.” It is doubtful that the Tokyopop writers had any idea that the name is related to Myos
tis alpestris. “Myusotis” looks like a mishmash of “sotis” and the transliteration of
Myus
tisu.
One common spelling is “Musotis Alpastonis.” “Musotis” is actually not unacceptable because Myos
tis can be written as Muosotis. (Muosotis is a transliteration of the Greek form of Myos
tis.) However, Myosotis and Myos
tis are referable because those spellings are often used with alpestris in the binomial nomenclature. Although
to can approximate the to in “Alpastonis,” the “o” in “Alpastonis” is unnecessary because there is no o specifically indicated by alpestris. That extra o is just as unnecessary as the “u” would be in “Alpastronisu.” It would have been better if the “a” in “Alpastonis” were e for reasons that I already stated.


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