Regarding canonicity of the Planet's name

In the same theme as my thread "Does Materia *actually* drain the life force of the Planet", here I have to ask about a part of canon I am skeptical about.

A common idea is that the name of FFVII's world is 'Gaia'. There are only two noteworthy spots (as far as I know) where this claim has been made. None of these include mentions in the Compilation titles, guide books or in interviews with the main writers behind FFVII.

1) A pamphlet about Advent Children, handed out at the 2004 Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3).
"The world of Gaia narrowly escaped destruction years ago." The author of this pamphlet is not given.

2) As an answer to a game of "FFVII Hangman" in the official North American home page for Dirge of Cerberus*. The quiz exists under "Final Fantasy VII Tribute".
- Image

*
The only other mention of Gaia is the "Gaea's Cliff" that Cloud & team climb in order to reach the Northern Crater. The lore presents us with no clear context for this name though.


My intuition tells me that both the pamphlet and the hangman game can easily be discarded. Both have the appearance of being done more by an advertising department rather than the FFVII writers themselves. I speculate that the DoC page's claim derives from the pamphlet, which in turns was written by a person in charge of advertising Advent Children and that he simply made a mistake when writing the world's name as being Gaia.


I raise this topic to see if anybody can point out further references to the Planet's supposed name (other than, indeed, "The Planet"). If references to the Planet's name can be found in the games, official guide books or in interviews with the FFVII writing team, then my suspicion that Gaia is not canon will have been disproven.

What do you think? Is this a mistake by Square and is it even reasonable for me to discard the pamphlet and the DoC site?

In Secret of Mana, theres a location called Gaia's Navel - I don't remember if the world in Secret of Mana had an official name though.

So I dunno, 'Gaia' is meant to be the personification of Earth in Greek Mythology, but I don't know if ancient greeks would refer to the planet as Gaia.

Sorry I can't be of more help

I refer to it as the Planet. Largely for the reasons you say. Also, to distinguish it from FF9's world.

In 9, is Terra the planet, or is that the other world?

Dont know if Gaea is a misspelling or intended as the etymology of what became Gaia. I find it quite interesting drawing comparisons with the etymology of our own planet's name

The modern English noun earth developed from Middle English erthe (recorded in 1137), itself from Old English eorthe (dating from before 725), deriving from Proto-Germanic *erthō. Earth has cognates in all other Germanic languages, including Dutch aarde, German Erde, and Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish jord.[31] The Earth is personified as a goddess in Germanic paganism (appearing as Jörð in Norse mythology, mother of the god Thor).

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I'd like to know where the name Ajit came from, and if they named the other continents.

ForceStealer said:

I refer to it as the Planet. Largely for the reasons you say. Also, to distinguish it from FF9's world.

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Same here. I've always figured Gaia was the canon name based on those sources, but I still usually call it the Planet so as not to get it confused with the name of the main planet from FFIX, which is also named Gaia.

http://na.square-enix.com/finalfant...tasy_series_biography_--_the_numbered_seriesm

"In FINAL FANTASY VII Cloud Strife battles the supremely powerful Sephiroth in an effort prevent a massive meteor from colliding into the world of Gaia."

FFWiki had this argument, although that was about the name of the article and not about it being a canon name. And even then, the wiki's policy was overturned to rename it.

Pixel said:

In 9, is Terra the planet, or is that the other world?

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Terra is the "other world". Gaia is the planet on which most of the game takes place.

JBedford128 said:

http://na.square-enix.com/finalfant...tasy_series_biography_--_the_numbered_seriesm

"In FINAL FANTASY VII Cloud Strife battles the supremely powerful Sephiroth in an effort prevent a massive meteor from colliding into the world of Gaia."

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Well, they're definitely getting the idea from somewhere. Considering how long ago it's been since the E3 pamphlet was released (nine years) and since the NA site for Dirge went live (seven years), I doubt a recent reference would be based entirely on those.

Of course, the remaining question is about whether this is wholly a localization thing or whether this was official in Japan in some form as well. I'm reminded of Lazard's last name in the English localization of Crisis Core: "Deusericus." A cool name, but entirely the product of the localization.

On the other hand, however, Genesis's last name, "Rhapsodos," is used constantly in localized material (including the localization of the game itself) and never shows up in the Japanese stuff -- but it is still from Japan and canon on every level, as it was used in early promo releases for Crisis Core until they inexplicably stopped using it over there.

One must then wonder which of these cases applies to "Gaia."

Personally, I don't have a problem accepting it as canon since the name is there in the game itself ("Gaia's Cliff") -- Japanese releases, English and otherwise.

Well, I don't know if Gaia is the canon name or not, but I always just called the planet "Bob".

Isn't Gaia theory an actual thing though? Like I remember someone talking about "Gaia Theory" in uni (the person didn't know anything about FF) which, according to them, is the belief that everything with life is cyclical and much like VII and IX when a person/ thing dies their energy is recycled.

I assumed that's why it's referred to as Gaia.

^Yep. The Gaia Theory and the Lifesteam are nearly identical.

Quilge Opie said:

Well, I don't know if Gaia is the canon name or not, but I always just called the planet "Bob".

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You call everything unnamed "Bob" though

I call it "The Planet" because I fell like that's a pretty good indication of the lack of respect/love the people have shown toward the planet. You feel less guilt about hitting, say, a squirrel with your car than you would hitting Mixy the cat.

^I never thought of that, and I don't know why.

This is another one for the Fanon Becomes Canon thread. There's no suggestion in the OG that the planet is called Gaia; no one in the entire game ever calls it Gaia; if their planet was called Gaia in the same way that our planet is called Earth, you'd think they'd have sayings like, "Now where on Gaia did I leave my car keys?" and surely Aerith at least would have referred to it by name.

If Square wanted to imply that the Planet's name is Gaia, why didn't they name the goddess in Crisis Core Gaia instead of Minerva? Both are Graeco-Roman immortals.

I'd put money on Lex and Obsidian being right: Lovelock's Gaia theory of Earth as a living organism seems to have been the inspiration for the Planet's ecology. Then the fandom kept calling the Planet "Gaia" so often and so loudly that Square decided to go with the people's choice.

Pixel said:

I'd like to know where the name Ajit came from, and if they named the other continents.

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Ajit => Ajito = Japanese word for hideout/base

In some fan translation, they mistook the word for the name of the Forgotten Capital.

Maybe it was called Gaia by the Ancients, but "the Planet" is definitely what it's called now.

LicoriceAllsorts said:

This is another one for the Fanon Becomes Canon thread. There's no suggestion in the OG that the planet is called Gaia; no one in the entire game ever calls it Gaia; if their planet was called Gaia in the same way that our planet is called Earth, you'd think they'd have sayings like, "Now where on Gaia did I leave my car keys?" and surely Aerith at least would have referred to it by name.

If Square wanted to imply that the Planet's name is Gaia, why didn't they name the goddess in Crisis Core Gaia instead of Minerva? Both are Graeco-Roman immortals.

I'd put money on Lex and Obsidian being right: Lovelock's Gaia theory of Earth as a living organism seems to have been the inspiration for the Planet's ecology. Then the fandom kept calling the Planet "Gaia" so often and so loudly that Square decided to go with the people's choice.

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As the fanfiction expert, is that something you see in fanfiction a lot prior to May of 2004? I remember the fan circles I knew being surprised when that pamphlet came along -- and most folks not really liking it since IX had already used the name.

Yeah I've never heard/seen anyone besides Square call it Gaia.

Hawkeye said:

As the fanfiction expert, is that something you see in fanfiction a lot prior to May of 2004? I remember the fan circles I knew being surprised when that pamphlet came along -- and most folks not really liking it since IX had already used the name.

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I think so. Loads and loads of FFVII have their characters go "Oh, for Gaia's sake" or something like that. It's really bothersome.

One reason for me bringing up this part of canon/fanon is due to its mention in Tres's Compilation of FFVII FAQ.

Here it is described as clear fact that the Planet's name is Gaia. I think this answer should change to include the acknowledgement that this part of canon is debatable and not 100% proven/disproven.

If Tres is ok with this and nobody thinks this issue deserves its own feature (similar to how the issue of the capitalization of 'Weapon' received its own, tiny article) then I can write up an alternate response to this question in the FAQ.

Shademp said:

One reason for me bringing up this part of canon/fanon is due to its mention in Tres's Compilation of FFVII FAQ.

Here it is described as clear fact that the Planet's name is Gaia. I think this answer should change to include the acknowledgement that this part of canon is debatable and not 100% proven/disproven.

If Tres is ok with this and nobody thinks this issue deserves its own feature (similar to how the issue of the capitalization of 'Weapon' received its own, tiny article) then I can write up an alternate response to this question in the FAQ.

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I'm still pretty sure nobody in the actual story knows the Planet's name to be Gaia. I mean, yeah there were cliffs called "Gaea's Cliffs" in another Final Fantasy I'd have accepted that but this is FFVII, the subject of the Planet itself was broached a hundred times, nobody said anything about Gaia.

I am also convinced that nobody in the games/books/movies uses the name 'Gaia'. However, the question remains where the Square staff (in those three instances we've spotted) got the idea from. We can't claim to have checked every relevant nook and cranny in the guide books, so a reference there might still exist. The name can be considered canon even if it only appears in supplementary material.

Could be that the name is a mistake. Maybe it's an idea that the FFVII writers threw around during the early days of the Compilation, but that survived on the Internet even after the idea had been discarded/forgotten. Because we can't do a quick-search for the term "Gaia" in Japanese guide books and magazines, I think it's best to categorize this part of canon as "debatable", even though my gut tells me that this Gaia-thing was not conceived by the official writers.

Minato Arisato said:

I'm still pretty sure nobody in the actual story knows the Planet's name to be Gaia. I mean, yeah there were cliffs called "Gaea's Cliffs" in another Final Fantasy I'd have accepted that but this is FFVII, the subject of the Planet itself was broached a hundred times, nobody said anything about Gaia.

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I'm not sure that's really the best point, though. The Weapons are all officially Ultima, Sapphire, Ruby, etc., but nobody in-game calls them that either, even though the Weapons get spoken of a lot in both mandatory and optional text.

While most of the Weapons do at least have an in-game presentation of their names on the battle screen, Sapphire's name literally only appears in supplementary material.

Shademp said:

Could be that the name is a mistake. Maybe it's an idea that the FFVII writers threw around during the early days of the Compilation, but that survived on the Internet even after the idea had been discarded/forgotten. Because we can't do a quick-search for the term "Gaia" in Japanese guide books and magazines, I think it's best to categorize this part of canon as "debatable", even though my gut tells me that this Gaia-thing was not conceived by the official writers.

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Looking into E3 2004, I can't find any mention of VII's core developers being present, though Youichi Wada was:

http://rpgfan.com/features/dear-friends/index.html
http://rpgfan.com/features/dear-friends/conference.html

I'll continue seeing what I can find, though. Maybe searching in Japanese will help.

Hawkeye said:

I'm not sure that's really the best point, though. The Weapons are all officially Ultima, Sapphire, Ruby, etc., but nobody in-game calls them that either, even though the Weapons get spoken of a lot in both mandatory and optional text.

While most of the Weapons do at least have an in-game presentation of their names on the battle screen, Sapphire's name literally only appears in supplementary material.

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Even if Sapphire only happened to ended up getting that designation in supplementary material, they're still just what you said, battlescreen representations, enemies gotta be called something, they're called "Weapons", because Professor Gast decided to call them Weapons, not knowing how many there are, whether they could be colourcoded or anything and never finding out either. But Gaia isn't likely to be a boss. And the story already has something else it consistently refers to it as specifically. Gaia is only a term for us to refer to the Final Fantasy VII world, but it's not a very good one considering there already are at least two Final Fantasy worlds with the name Gaia.