Obviously the most famous Onion Knight in popular culture today, especially in the west, is Ser Davos Seaworth from George R.R. Martin's fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, as well as its HBO adaption. That character, at least within the context of the story, got his name after being knighted for smuggling a boatload of onions into a castle under siege.
What's interesting though is that this isn't the first time the term onion knight showed up in pop culture. Eight years before Ser Davos first appeared in 1998's A Clash of Kings, there was a job class called Onion Knight ("Tamanegi Kenshi" in Japanese, more or less a literal translation as far as I can tell) in the SquareSoft JRPG Final Fantasy III. Other Japanese fantasy games have them as well, most notably Dark Souls, but those may well be direct nods to Final Fantasy's use of the term. I can't see any such connection to Martin's work though. I doubt he had played the game when he created Ser Davos, especially since Final Fantasy III was only officially released in the west in 2006, and even the first fully playable fan translation post-dates ACoK.
Now Onion Knight is a pretty weird term, so I was wondering whether the developers at SquareSoft and George R.R. Martin really came up with it independently, or whether they could both be referencing an earlier use of the term.
I thought I would never get to do one of these. Thank you for posting something so esoterically aligned with my knowledge set.
To the best of my knowledge, it derives from Japanese and gained popularity in English through Final Fantasy games and other media. The first use is likely from Final Fantasy 3. In terms of meaning, it may refer to an idiom, but may also just have been the game designer thinking the class resembled an onion visually.
As well, GRRM is not a gamer and we can safely assume he has never played Final Fantasy
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I have a background in linguistics and comparative literature. I’m also a big video game fan and avid fantasy genre reader in several languages. I am not a native Japanese speaker, but have studied Classical Japanese literature in Japanese.
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POSSIBLE ETYMOLOGY:
“The adjective of onion refers to the Japanese metaphoric idiom of poverty, aptly named the "Onion Life", "peeling away one layer at a time and crying all the way". Alternatively, the term could come from the slang phrase "to know one's onions", meaning to be very versatile”
“Know your Onions” is also an American phrase that became more popular as a British English idiom from the 1920s.
“The crucial fact is that the expression isn't British but American, first recorded in the magazine Harper's Bazaar in March 1922. It was one of a set of such phrases, all with the sense of knowing one's stuff, or being highly knowledgeable in a particular field, that circulated in the 1920s »
It is beyond my current skill set to track if Know Your Onions is an metaphorical coincidence between the two languages, or if there was direct language transfer here.
However, I’d like to point out that in Japanese you can also refer to someone who is useless or a dud as “an onion” sort of like we can say in English “they are a bit of a lemon”.
So all connotations put together alongside what the class actually represents, an Onion Knight is a sad semi useless person who could be versatile eventually once they start knowing their stuff (becoming a renaissance man so to speak).
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LIKELY JUST A VISUAL THING:
But the use of Onion Knight might actually have ZERO intended linguistic meaning. It may be 100% that the character accidentally resembled an onion:
According to a French article with the designer: « Cependant, en 2017, le game designer du jeu Tanaka Hiromicho a répondu lors d’une interview “boarf, le haut de son casque ressemblait à un oignon et j’ai suggéré ce nom (rire)”. Ainsi s’achève la légende du chevalier oignon… »
which translates to
the game designer said in a 2017 interview that “ugh, well I thought the helmet looked like an onion so I just suggested to call the character an Onion Knight (laughs out loud)”
Going down the rabbit hole in a couple languages, people are divided on if Tanaka Hiromicho actually remembers why he named the class Onion Knight. There is some “death of the author” going on here with the fanbase. Meaning that despite his words, some people believe Tanaka is misremembering and that the Onion Knight is a actually clever pun (or that Tanaka was not aware that he was referencing the Onion metaphors but was still subconsciously doing so). Your choice on what to believe there.
To sort of get this, I imagine an alternate reality where I name the weak-beginning class a “Lemon Knight” because it looks yellow and has an unintentionally lemon-shaped hat. Then some people say “that’s so clever!” Fans might ask why it’s called a Lemon Knight and other fans may answer with “In English, lemon can mean a ‘dud’ and also lemons can represent potential opportunity from bad luck because in English people say ‘when life gives you lemons, make lemonade’” or “In English, yellow is the colour of fear, trepidation, and cowardice! People say Yellow Bellied!’
So - I mean the connotations are there, but to what extent is someone intentionally doing that? Is it reasonable that an English speaker naming a class that was yellow a “Lemon Knight” would have had all the connotations and cultural meanings of “lemon” in mind? Probably not. But for some things that have more obvious connotations, maybe they would. A “Vulture Knight” might have a strong enough connotation to be unavoidably associated in the creator’s mind.
It’s just hard to say. Connotations are hard to measure, and it’s not always conscious when we lean on them. So people who believe it is Onion as in Dud are saying that the mental connection between Onion and Potential are so strong that there had to be a connection. Hard to say.
I have not run across a knight/samurai/etc being referred to as an Onion ____ in any of my classical Japanese literature classes as far as I am aware. As I am a big FF fan, I think I would recall, but it is possibly the term slipped by me. It could be an term in manga predating Final Fantasy, but I am not well versed in manga or modern Japanese literature. Though, as I cannot find anything before FF3, it does really seem that FF3 invented the term.
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GRRM Is NOT A GAMER:
As for GRRM , he has received criticism for NOT being a gamer. Here is author Brandon Sanderson being salty that GRRM was asked to help write the new Elden Ring Game:
“Let me be salty,” Sanderson said. “FromSoftware decides to make a fantasy game and partner with a fantasy novelist, and they choose someone who spends his days blogging about the NFL rather than the person who has played their games since King’s Field and has listed their games as among his top 10 consistently over time … They went to George and made a game with George, and I’m like, George doesn’t play video games. George has no idea.”
And George Agrees: « Now, video games are not really my thing - oh, I played a few back in the dawn of time, mainly strategy games like Railroad Tycoon, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Master of Orion - but this offer was too exciting to refuse,” Martin said. »
So as far as I can tell, the use of Onion knight by GRRM is simply pejorative. The Knight is being mocked for smuggling onions and I don’t see any intentional connection between the two phrases. It is possible GRRM saw the term in a google search, but in my opinion these uses of Onion Knight seem mostly unrelated and coincidental.
There is a very slim possibility that GRRM was referencing the British English idiom « know your onions » and meant to secretly imply Davos was extremely competent, but that’s not really knowable unless he is directly asked. And even then, we could get a “death of the author” situation again and debate in in GRRM is fully aware of all his unconscious inspirations.