User blog comment:Freelance Grammar Nazi/Kind of a Rant...?/@comment-1271618-20100705062137

I wish I could hear Estonia and Poland's voices better in that clip. It looks like they gave Latvia a voice for the dubbed version of the scene too, with him sobbing.

Yeah, for the extended "Nordics family", there's Greenland, Aland (if it's not Hanatamago), and the Faroe Islands that come to mind. But I'd hope we get some other areas of the world before them. Not sure if Shetland and Orkney would have characters, but they were also in the Kalmar Union with Faroe and Greenland and the five we already have.

When it comes to the genders for characters, without getting into too much of a sexism debate or one of the flat-out "no girls, girls suck" ones, it's interesting to look at factors that might influence the designs. There are the colonized/colonist nations and notability factors to consider, but lesser-known countries do not always have to be automatically female. So then there's the "cuteness" and author-appeal factor to think about, what looks best to the artist. And one thing that I've picked up, but that is also flexible, is how country names sound in Japanese that might give him gender ideas:

Czech Republic, as noted before, is "Cheko". Stereotypical yeah, but it automatically gives Himaruya and Japanese fans the imagery of a female because of the "-ko". Slovakia is "Surobakia" in katakana and gives off a "masculine" feel somehow to them (it does sound a bit harsher).

India is "Indo", so maybe the reason why he's considered a guy India (yet isn't sure if he'll ever draw them) is for that, and of course maybe he just likes the whole Maharaja feel as he put for a possible idea. Obviously we can see there's a lot of disagreement with the idea of a male India XD. But I think like with Czechoslovakia, they'd be another case of not being able to please everyone since their gender's a very polarizing thing with some fans. Some feel they should be a girl, some a guy, and then there's the rarely-heard idea of two Indias. Though if he makes two, it would then bring the debate of "why not two Belgiums?". It's a very tricky thing to even think about as a fan with headcanon in my experience too. How many characters do you apply for one nation that has cultural splits, does a region that used to be a kingdom warrant a still-active character, etc.

Luxembourg sounds very silly in Japanese: The katakana reads "Rukusenburuku". What a mouthful of a name. I've seen a lot of fans want them to be male, but what kind of male varies from opinion to opinion. Romania ("rumania") is seen as being a woman by a lot of Japanese fans, though some like the idea of them being an effeminate vampire-like male. I see a lot of female Romania OCs on this end, though there are the male ones too.

Albania seems to be mostly predicted to be a man. The Al/aru part might also play a part in this for the Japanese side of fandom. I've seen the rare female OC for them, but the general thought seems to be a guy.