Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, due out on February 29, will be giving Cait Sith, a cat-like party member from the original Final Fantasy VII, his proper introduction in the Remake timeline. We’ll be getting a lot of face time with our feline friend in the sequel, but that naturally means people are going to be saying his name, so Rebirth will have to deal with a long-simmering fan debate about how you pronounce “Cait Sith.” Now, Square Enix has finally revealed the name’s pronunciation in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and it’s causing some conflicting emotions among fans.
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While the background is obviously different, the name Cait Sith originates from a creature in Celtic mythology. But a lot of fans didn’t realize this when they met the character in the original Final Fantasy VII, which didn’t have voice acting. As such, swaths of the community have pronounced his name the way it looks, but it sounds like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is taking a hard stance. Square Enix made a post on Twitter (now known as X) saying Cait Sith will be pronounced like “Kate Sihth,” which is more or less how many fans have been saying it, as opposed to using the original Scottish Gaelic pronunciation “Ket Shee.”
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The response to this announcement has been mixed, as you can see in the responses to Square Enix’s tweet. For some players this affirms the way they’ve said Cait Sith’s name for over 20 years. Others argue this is erasing the actual term’s history, which is embedded in an entirely different culture and folklore. The Japanese pronunciation is much closer to the original Gaelic, but English-speaking territories will get the more anglicized pronunciation. In theory, Square Enix’s ruling could have ended a decades-long debate, but instead it seems to have added more logs to the fire.
Even when Final Fantasy VII extended universe works like the Advent Children film gave voices to the characters, they often talked around Cait Sith’s name instead of saying it. In Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, Cid pronounces Cait Sith like “Kate,” but given this was a spin-off game, it’s likely several fans have never heard this exchange. Here’s the clip of the scene. The name drop happens at the 40-second mark:
Pronunciation debates in Final Fantasy aren’t new, especially pertaining to character and concept names most people read in the early days of the franchise before 2000’s Final Fantasy X gave its characters voices. Even that game still has a raging debate surrounding how to pronounce its protagonist’s name, because you could rename Tidus however you wanted and dialogue was carefully written to never name him out loud. Later spin-off games like the Dissidia franchise and Kingdom Hearts pronounced his name “Tee-dus,” but even Kingdom Hearts II confused the issue by calling him “Tide-us.”
Final Fantasy XVI ran into this as well with protagonist Clive pronouncing series summon mainstay Ifrit like “If-reet,” as opposed to “Eef-rit” in some past iterations. Basically, Final Fantasy fans have been working with inconsistent information on a few fronts, and Cait Sith is just one of a few examples.
While we can debate how to say “Cait Sith” all day, one thing we can all unanimously agree on is that Andrea Rhodea is the best character in the Final Fantasy VII subseries, am I right?
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