Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's Director Says Cait Sith Is Pronounced "Kat Shee"

23.12.2023 - 20:11 / thegamer.com / Naoki Hamaguchi

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director, Naoki Hamaguchi, has reignited the great debate about how Cait Sith is pronounced, as his own pronunciation goes against the infamous Twitter post that started it all.

Beyond introducing an open world, a greater focus on side quests, and the looming threat that one of the main characters is going to suffer an irreversible death, the biggest thing coming to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is Cait Sith, who was briefly shown in Intergrade and is now becoming playable. That should be exciting news, but there's been one big problem surrounding the character ever since he was confirmed to be in the game - the pronunciation of his name.

For those that don't know, Cait Sith is named after a cat-like creature from Celtic mythology, who is usually presented as a fairy that appears in a few different forms but is always catlike. Considering Cait Sith is inspired by Celtic mythology, most Final Fantasy fans agree that his name should be pronounced like "Ket She" or "Kit She", just like his mythological inspiration.

Despite that being the obvious answer and Cait Sith even having a Scottish accent that makes his origins clear, that's not what Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is going with. A few months ago, the official Final Fantasy 7 Twitter shared a post that claimed that Cait Sith is actually pronounced how it sounds phonetically and is supposed to be "Kate Sihth". Many Final Fantasy fans disagreed with this pronunciation and took it as an erasure of the character's Gaelic origins.

Now, three months after the controversy happened, it's been brought up all over again by the game's own director. Game Informer recently had the chance to go hands-on with Rebirth and chat with the developers, including director Naoki Hamaguchi. As shared by Twitter user ShinraArch, Game Informer revealed during a recent episode of the GI Show that Hamaguchi actually pronounces it "Kat Shee" which is closer to the actual pronunciation.

In Japan, Cait Sith is pronounced ‘ketto shi’, which is also closer to the Gaelic pronunciation.

Hamaguchi's claim that he pronounces Cait Sith like "Kat Shee" has reignited the debate about how Cait Sith is pronounced all over again, as even the game's director seems to think that the version shared on Twitter isn't correct. This is likely because the Japanese dub of the game is going to use "Kat Shee" and not "Kate Sihth", but it still shows how strange and needlessly messy the whole situation is.