Oroku Saki, Tang Shen, and Hamato Yoshi are all the core trinity of the TMNT origin. I've been doing a little digging, and I've only just realized just how inaccurate their names are. Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman REALLY didn't give ANY critical thought to the names at all.
Tang Shen... now, a lot of us already know that this is a Chinese name, not Japanese. But it turns out that "Shen" is actually a male name, not female. The female name closest to "Shen" is "Shan", which means coral. And looking for a female Japanese name that means coral, I came up with "Sango."
Well, what about
Oroku Saki? The good news is, yes, Saki is a Japanese name. But it's a female Japanese name. (Oroku is also a Japanese name, so we don't have to worry about that.)
Hamato Yoshi? Yoshi is a Japanese male name meaning "good luck", "righteous", or "good." But Hamato? It doesn't even appear to be Asian, but Indian or Middle-Eastern.
All of my research took place in about fifteen minutes, so it's likely some of y'all can dig deeper and find out more. My personal curiosity has been satisfied... but man, this bugs me.
