A plagarism question: Final Fantasy vs. George R R Martin

[TimeWizard]

I have recently devoted much time to a seemingly futile task, the origin of the some phrases and an accusation of plagarism.

It starts like this: Final Fantasy has a job class called the onion knight (aka onion kid) and a mercenary company called the Black Sheep Knights. I pointed out to a friend that Davos Seaworth (from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire) is called The Onion Knight. Bryndon Tully (same series) is called a black sheep knight by his family (His nickname is the Black Fish). My friend was quick to point out that both of these terms are from the final fantasy and that George R R Martin stole them. I assumed that it was beyond coincidence, maybe they both are real terms from history or an uncommon expression. Can anyone shed some light on this? Who was first, and is this more than a mere coincidence?

**I am posting this thread on the Games (other) board and the Media board because it is relavent to both topics.

[Dr._Weird]

Uh, no. This is in no way stolen. In fact, the origins of the titles were clearly explained in the book.

Davos is called the onion knight because the act of bringing onions to Stannis was responsible for his knighting.

And the black sheep knight... do I need to go over this? He's different, thus the expression black sheep. He is also a knight.

[Gavin Sage]

Which FF has the onion class name? Simply because I don't remember it, which probably means that it is newer then Davos Seaworth who has existed since 1998.

[Setra]

Final Fantasy 3

I believe it came out in 1990?

Edit: According to gamefaqs 04/27/90

It's probably a coincidence.

Edit Edit: Which FF has Black Sheep Knights? :smallconfused:

Edit Edit Edit: Apparently Tactics.

[Rob Knotts]

It's also possible that's it's an homage to some degree, where Martin simply liked the names and developed his own ideas for them. Or maybe he decided to use the names not realizing where he originally heard of them. Neither case would be plagarism, that requires a much more deliberate and extensive use of someone else's ideas.

Japanese artists/writers/game designers wouldn't even bat an idea at this sort of thing. This kind of allusion to other creative works shows up all the time in manga, anime, and Japanese videogames. Keeping an idea from resembling somebody else's idea is a lot less important than creating something new and original out of the idea.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Cribbing names isn't plagiarism. Making the exact same characters with the same or different names would be. "Black Sheep Knight" even sounds like it could be a coincidence, being a portmanteau of two very common terms (black knight and black sheep).

"Onion Knight", on the other hand, sounds like it might be a historical allusion though, just because it's so darn random in the first place.

[Skyshot]

To my understanding, "Onion" in Japanese is slang for "useless."

Background: In FF3j, a game with adjustable character classes (similar to FFV and maybe a few others), the Onion Knight was the default class all characters started at. Once you got your first set of classes, you changed as quickly as possible.

The funny thing is,
the Onion Knights actually had potential to be the strongest damage class -- some rarely encountered monsters late in the game rarely drop Onion equipment, which was the most powerful gear in the game, and could only be equipped by Onion Knights.

So yeah. I'm not familiar with George R. R. Martin's work (maybe I should be), but reading this thread, I don't get the impression there's any similarity beyond the names.

[Gavin Sage]

Haven't played the real FFIII. But yeah this sounds like nothing more then coincidence. It takes a bit of work to acquire FFIII until recently so I'm not going to think anything of it. Onion is not exactly an obscure word in English or Japanese, nor is Knight unknown in fantasy to say the least.

I mean heck Bryden is never even called "Black Sheep Knight" his title is the Blackfish, and he is called a black sheep but never as a title. He took his status as the black sheep of the Tully's who use a fish on their heraldry so he became the Blackfish.

[Umbral_Arcanist]

Yeah, that stuff happens all the time, i think the GBA FF1 uses "mind flayers" which i think may be copyrighted by Wizards, though that could just be "illithids"

[Gralamin]

Yeah, that stuff happens all the time, i think the GBA FF1 uses "mind flayers" which i think may be copyrighted by Wizards, though that could just be "illithids"

At that time, The copy right would of belonged to TSR I believe.

[I'm da Rogue!]

Hehe, I realised that when I asked Onion Knight if he got his nick from Martin's series. He told me he got it from FF.
Having read all of his "A Song Of Ice and Fire" books so far, I think Martin has a pretty good imagination and he doesn't need to steal others' ideas. A coincidence maybe.

Btw, have u played "A Game Of Thrones" rpg?

[TimeWizard]

Thanks for all the input! I'm glad that this was more or less resolved. Good job guys and girls.