

Is there any significance to the character names in Elfen Lied, particularly
with regards to the more important characters? With some characters, there's a
clear "meaning" - e.g. Nana, who was also known as "Number 7" at the research
facility. Could other character names e.g. "Lucy" be allusions to something,
or perhaps in some other way meaningful given the plot?


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elfen-lied
Is there any significance to character names in Elfen Lied?


# Although this is never confirmed it does fit the plot in a way

Lucy's name closely resembles Lucifer considering that Lucy is the evil alter-
ego it would be one of the most fitting.

Another possibility would be that the name is related to St. Lucy/Lucia, but
this is a pretty far fetched theory.

> They threatened to drag her off to a brothel if she did not renounce her
> Christian beliefs, but were unable to move her, even with a thousand men and
> fifty oxen pulling. So they stacked materials for a fire around her instead
> and set light to it, but she would not stop speaking, insisting that her
> death would lessen the fear of it for other Christians and bring grief to
> non-believers. One of the soldiers stuck a spear through her throat to stop
> these denouncements, but to no effect. Soon afterwards, the Roman consulate
> in charge was hauled off to Rome on charges of theft from the state and
> beheaded. Saint Lucy was able to die only when she was given the Christian
> sacrament [source](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lucy%27s_Day)

**Edit** Re-reading the related question [What's the significance of the 'w'
finger position in Elfen
Lied?](https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/5472/whats-the-significance-
of-the-w-finger-position-in-elfen-lied?rq=1) I think the st Lucy/Lucia theory
is less far fetched then I thought myself. Elfen Lied seems to be pretty
Christian influenced.


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One other interpretation is that Lucy is a reference to [the
hominid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_%28Australopithecus%29), as
mentioned by [ninjalj](https://anime.stackexchange.com/users/3652/ninjalj).
This would seem to make sense given the role of Lucy within the plot as a
mitochondrial Eve for the researchers. However, the manga itself doesn't seem
to explicitly explain why Kaede is designated as Lucy by the researchers, and
so it isn't clear what the "correct" interpretation of Lucy's name (if there
is even any) is.

The same appears to go for many of the other characters, beyond very obvious
cases such as Nana.


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