Berias

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The character Velius in Final Fantasy Tactics was the demonic form of the transformed Wiegraf, who before that the leader of the Death Corps, a band of mercenaries.

The Final Fantasy Compendium suggests this to be a mistranslation of the word "belial". This is most likely to have taken place.

In the Japanese version of FFT, Velius is known as Berias, where Berias is pronounced as Bae-Ri-As (ベリアス). As there are no "v" and "l" consonents in the Japanese language, the consonents "b" and "r" are used in place to pronounce/write foreign words that require them (actually, in the case of "v" there is a modern intervention which combine two katakana letters together (ヴィ) but "v" is close sounding to "b" so confusion can still take place). For example, in Final Fantasy X, Lulu's name in Japanese is actually Ruru (of course the Japanese form of the name came before the English version, so this resembles a bit of the chicken and egg problem). This problem has also occured in several other Squaresoft games such as Xenogears. Therefore "berias" can be translated into "berias", "verias", "belias" or "velias". Here it must be noted that "belias" is an occasional spelling of "belial".

So the closest to "velius" from "berias" is "velias". How then did the "a" become a "u"? There are several possibilities.

  1. Velius is a relatively common Roman name.
  2. It is an actual latin word that means 'fleece' or 'skin'.
  3. The "u" was just another mistranslation problem. From here "velius" is obtained.

What makes the above explanation more plausible is that the FFT character's name is an apt choice to describe the role as a rouge turned demon in the game: The word "belial" appears several times in the Bible - once in Second Corinthians of the New Testament and the rest in the Old Testament. It is a personification of worthlessness or wickedness. In the Old Testament, the word was used in the context of describing people of waste. For example, "the sons of Belial", "a man of Belial". "Belial" is sometimes another name for Satan. In John Milton's Paradise Lost, however, Belial, who is a demon of hell, is a separate entity.

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