So speaking of names I believe it is sudden headcanon time

teacupballerina:

(This relates to that idea of Aku being ‘alive’ but not self-aware before being shot by the emperor and carried all of that pain of being rejected over into his conscious form and that’s why he’s so pissy)

So Aku got his start in ancient Japan, where the language has developed and is still developing. He’s existed for years as a tar swamp. 

The Japanese word for ‘Evil’ is ‘Aku’, as you should know by now.

So the humans that have happened upon him time and time again have more than likely called him ‘Aku’ and cursed his existence and all of that shit.

Aku named himself when he gained consciousness. He says, “I am Aku!”; but he couldn’t have known what it really meant, he’d just been born, and had only ever heard it being shouted at him like an insult or a declaration of fear.

To explain it a little better: if you’ve ever seen or read ‘Wolf’s Rain’, there’s a character called Cheza who was created in a lab, and refers to herself as ‘This One’. The creator’s notes say that this is because when the doctors and scientists were talking about Cheza around her while they assumed her to be unconscious, they would refer to her as ‘This One’, not ‘Cheza’. Although Cheza is her name, she doesn’t call herself that because that’s not what she was referred to as when she was still being developed. She believes ‘This One’ to be her true name, though she’s unaware of what it actually means (that she is one of many experimental maidens created from flowers).

It’s the same idea. Aku didn’t know what to refer to himself as; he was never given a real name as far as he knows.  

When the black mass consumed a person, their companion would run off shouting about evil. When villagers came to the black mass to offer one of their own as a sacrifice to try and stop it, they would refer to it as evil. Aku has been called ‘evil’ since his arrival at Earth. He didn’t know what it meant; he assumed that’s what he was to call himself, it’s all he knew. It’s only by an ironic twist of fate that he lived up to that name in the end.

I don’t know if this makes sense or not but I thought it was kind of a sad idea (As are most things about Aku)?????