You've Been Saying Lady Dimitrescu's Name Wrong This Whole Time
Resident Evil fans are obsessed with the upcoming antagonist for Resident Evil Village, Lady Dimitrescu. People can't stop talking about her height and have created countless memes dedicated to her. IGN was even able to find out her shoe size. Despite this attention to detail, it seems one small aspect about Village's villainess may have been overlooked — the proper pronunciation of her name.
According to a tweet from Brittney Brombacher, co-founder of the "What's Good Games" podcast, Capcom told her in preparation for a Resident Evil Village showcase that the correct pronunciation of Lady D's name is to drop the "u." A clip of Brombacher's introduction made the rounds on Twitter, and fans had plenty of issues with Capcom's interpretation of the name.
Twitter user Dante Bogdan argued that the pronunciation Capcom provided for Brombacher was "not even close ... it's a local name in our language, I would know." Bogdan later stated that the name is Romanian and that they "died a little inside" after hearing it pronounced in the clip. Many people linked to various pronunciation videos on YouTube, arguing that the pronunciation was wrong no matter what Capcom said. One user asserted that "[Capcom] can 'confirm' whatever, ask any Romanian person how to pronounce it and they will tell you it's dimi-tres-ku."
Others insisted that Capcom has never shown interest in being culturally correct in its games. Twitter user Sam "Porter" Bridges referenced Resident Evil 4 to argue this: "... RE4 is an absolute aberration as a 'representation' of Spain, with its people speaking Mexican, names mispronounced, the coin being Pesetas when in 2005 they were long gone." They also commented that "if they did all of that for Spain I can only imagine what they did for Romania." Others expressed concern about how Lady D's name was recorded for the game. One user, Zach Van Bibber, argued that Japanese companies like Capcom haven't cared about "representation of foreign countries” in the past, but that they've improved recently.
While Brombacher received some criticisms for how she pronounced Dimitrescu, other users supported Brombacher with compliments among the outrage. She seemed to appreciate this — especially since she mentioned that she spent a lot of time practicing the pronunciation.
Resident Evil Village releases for PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Stadia on May 17, 2021.