Regula van Hydrus (potential spoilers until the end of Heavensward)

[Dalvy]

You know what, given that regula's legion is the VIth, perhaps it's going to emulate Celes...? She starts off as general of her own Empire legion, herself

[Lusavari]

Uh, if I'm not mistaken isn't Aquila typically given as a male name? (though I dont recall ever hearing of a human named Aquila)

The name means Eagle. There was also an undead Hume who was a villain by that name in FF11. http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/A..._Fantasy_XI%29

[Cilia]

Being a man that has a feminine name in real life... (Technically sexually ambiguous), I really don't seen why everyone is so bent out of shape over Regula's name. Trying to bend around logic to make a character something he's not without any viable explanations doesn't work.

I'd wager people just want a female Legatus, and are running on confirmation bias and rationalizing the evidence against their point of view.

"Regula van Hydrus could be a woman, and is just disguising her sex and using a voice changer to sound like a man!"

The problem with that kind of logic is that it runs like this:

... which is always technically a true statement.

Pretty sure there's a female Legatus, though. We'll just have to wait for the VIIIth (or maybe the IIIrd) to show up.

[Gaiussenpai]

Gaius and Regula are male if you listened to their English and Jp voices and Nael was just reborn from memories as a female.

[Arixtotle]

I'd probably just call it a case of a male name following female linguistic rules - i.e. an exception.

Except it's not. It's known that it's a female name. It's the name of a female Saint. She's one of the patron saints of Zurich.

[Kaiser-Ace]

Except it's not. It's known that it's a female name. It's the name of a female Saint. She's one of the patron saints of Zurich.

Artemis is traditionally a Female name but can and has been given to Males who show a great proficiency in battle, archery, and Hunting. There are exceptions to all rules. And how do you know it's not an exception? Last I checked Fern and Yoshi-P haven't popped in and gone "Oh yea, Regula is a woman. the name should of given it away on it's own". They most likly picked the name based on it's latin meaning alone. Doing that can net you some weird names. That's why I stopped using latin in my naming conventions for my amature novelas.

[Cilia]

Japanese personal pronouns are tricky, as they are, by definition, personal, and as such embody how the speaker identifies themselves. It is not unheard of for women and girls to unironically use male pronouns in their daily lives (the polite masculine boku especially), and even, rarely, for men to use female pronouns (atashi is commonly used by more... colorful portrayals of gay men). In the case of one Nael deus Darnus, however, a woman disguised as a man would use a male pronoun when speaking, and wouldn't necessarily switch to a feminine pronoun just because you saw her face.

However, that particular line from the Japanese script is referencing something Nael said in the line before, so it isn't really conclusive taken out of context.

Completely off-topic, but...

In regards to van Darnus, from what research I've done Nael was always a woman in the JP script, but changed to a man in the EN and other scripts due to that quirk of Japanese personal pronouns.

Naturally, this is only possible due to the lack of voices in 1.x and Nael having no voiced lines in the Coil. Since Nael was probably using masculine Japanese pronouns (boku or ore), they would naturally translate her as a man and without voices there's no conflict or context. Then the Coil comes around, and Nael is unmasked and revealed to be a woman... so they worked around it, stating Bahamut got translated!Nael wrong and "accidentally" gave him a sex change in every language but JP. This ruse only worked because of Japanese language quirks and the lack of voices.

Back on point, such a ruse doesn't work with voiced content because you have the context of what their voice sounds like and, while there are exceptions, there are "typical" pitches masculine and feminine voices fall under. Seeing as van Hydrus has a masculine voice in every language, unless they decide to go with a voice changer trick (which I'm not saying is impossible, just improbable with current evidence) he is, in fact, a man.

[Anonymoose]

<...>

You're not far from what I assume the truth to be.

If Japan pre-planned it beyond out-of-game impressions, however, they could have have decided against giving Nael a male voice pack.

(And, when asked in person post-ARR, Yoshida would probably have more to say than, in-game, Nael was "always man.")

<...> so his helmet is either designed to have a voice alterer in it...or nael kept his voice in the genderswap

Darksteelfoil Hatting: You're doing it right. 10/10. I mean, it seems most likely to me that (looking at it from the perspective of the devs' retrospective clean-up of the in-game continuity) Nael's voice in all its incarnations were within ranges to not raise any flags contradictory of expectations based on the current knowledge of the listener, and, beyond that, DON'T THINK TOO HARD ABOUT IT, but still. 10/10.

[VargasVermillion]

yes but so far we have never seen a female legatus therefore it could be that they hide there gender in order to be able to have the hope of reaching that point.

But lorewise? why would they feel the need to hide their genders when they don't discriminate by gender in the military?

[VargasVermillion]

On that note about a female legate, there are 14 of them total and we've only seen 3, a female one will come at some point even if none of the ones we've seen are.
Either they'll be half n half or they'll be the minority but still there.