[saghm]

> The product name comes from the second syllable of the Japanese word pronounced as Gojira, which is Japanese for Godzilla.

Interesting, I would have thought "jira" was two syllables, but I know absolutely nothing about Japanese, so I assume this is correct and the pronunciation rules are just not what I'm used to from English.

[zumu]

> I would have thought "jira" was two syllables

It is in fact two syllables.

Fun fact: Gojira is the combination of 'Go' of 'Gorilla' and 'jira' of 'kujira' (whale). It is said, kujira comes from the combination of old Japanese 'ku' (black) and 'shira' (white) aka 'black white' after the coloration of killer whales. So at some level Jira derives from the word "white". I could probably trace back the roots for shira a bit, but I need to get some work done.

[layer8]

“Dzi” is a nonstandard romanization for “ji”, both spellings refer to the same Japanese syllable “ジ”. Similarly for “lla” vs. “ra” (Japanese “ラ”). Thus both spellings “Godzilla” and “Gojira” refer to the same Japanese word “ゴジラ”. Here’s how it sounds like in Japanese: https://forvo.com/word/gojira/

[saghm]

Maybe my phrasing was a bit clear (and maybe I'm misunderstanding the Wikipedia quote!), but I read it as saying "gojira" was two syllables, the second of which was "jira". I naively would have expected it to be three sillables, "go", "ji", and "ra", but maybe I was misreading the Wikipedia quote and it was just talking about "dz" and "ji" and not the entirety of "jira".

[yencabulator]

Gojira is three syllables total, go-ji-ra (or non-standard older go-dzi-lla; never god-zil-la for Japanese -- it does not rhyme with deities).

Maybe you're suffering from the usual learning curve thing where non-native speakers have trouble differentiating parts of words, because the emphasis and pronunciation simply isn't what you're used to.

Native speakers don't emphasize every syllable separately, just like you wouldn't emphasize every syllable in na-ti-ve; or how a non-native speaker like me would try to split "separate" into syllables that as se-pa-rate or se-pa-ra-te instead sep-a-rate.

(As someone who knows a couple handfuls of Japanese words, and comes from a language with somewhat similar phonemes, gojira is pronounced exactly how I expect it to be pronounced.)

[saghm]

> Gojira is three syllables total, go-ji-ra (or non-standard older go-dzi-lla; never god-zil-la for Japanese -- it does not rhyme with deities).

Aha, okay, that's what I was thinking; I was confused by the phrasing that Wikipedia used (i.e. "the product name comes from the second syllable") and assumed that meant that "jira" was a single syllable (the second), and thought that I might be missing something about how the pronunciation works. It sounds like I was just misreading the Wikipedia quote though, so thanks for bearing with my confusion and explaining it!