Why gunbreaker?

[Kaedan]

It conceptually translates to "Gunblade" in the French and German translations.
Revolverklinge --> revolver/gun + blade/sword
Pistosabreur --> pistol/gun + sabre/blade

Japanese translation is basically "Gunbreaker"
ガンブレイカー --> ガン (gun) + ブレイ (buh-reh) + カー (kah) --> it's literally just gunbreaker in katakana

As to why "Gunbreaker", if I recall correctly Yoshi-P felt "Gunblade" was more the weapon they used and not the job itself, and he liked the idea of "Breaker" as it conveyed the sense of someone who was the vanguard that led the charge into battle and broke through the enemy lines.

We'll find out more with the job quests, but this is basically it. They didn't want to call it Gunblade, because that's the name of the weapon. And the job originated in Ilsabard with the Hrothgar who were the Queen's personal guard. So it probably has something to do with "breaking enemy lines" or foiling assassination attempts, etc.

[AvenoMatt]

Gunbreaker has nothing or at least very little to do with the Garleans or their magitek. The reason why their gunblabes are similar to Garlean gunblades is because the Hrothgar are also from Ilsabard so it makes sense the two neighboring cultures would have similar weaponry. Gunbreaker is also a fighting style that was created by the Hrothgar and is used by their royal gaurd. Now whether Gunbreaker gunblades are based off of Garlean gunblades or vice versa idk.

[Darkpaw]

Gunbreaker has nothing or at least very little to do with the Garleans or their magitek. The reason why their gunblabes are similar to Garlean gunblades is because the Hrothgar are also from Ilsabard so it makes sense the two neighboring cultures would have similar weaponry. Gunbreaker is also a fighting style that was created by the Hrothgar and is used by their royal gaurd. Now whether Gunbreaker gunblades are based off of Garlean gunblades or vice versa idk.

I get the point you are coming across here but one thing i would like to point out or just clarify (not saying you personally dont know this but to any passerby that may be unclear)

Gunbreaker gunblades and Garlean gunblades are nothing alike.

gunbreaker gunblades: incorporate a firing mechanism that doesn’t actually shoot any projectiles, the firing sequence is meant to vibrate the blade for increased damage ala Squall’s gunblade in FF8

Garlean gunblades: basically its a gun with a sword attached to it. It is capable of firing stand alone projectiles and slashing. But it is functionally nothing like the gunbreaker gunblades.

Also side notes any time a gunbreaker’s gunblade looks like it’s firing anything it’s an aetherial discharge. Not a physical projectile.

Whereas garleans can’t use/manipulate aether at all.

[Iscah]

Japanese translation is basically "Gunbreaker"
ガンブレイカー --> ガン (gun) + ブレイ (buh-reh) + カー (kah) --> it's literally just gunbreaker in katakana

As to why "Gunbreaker", if I recall correctly Yoshi-P felt "Gunblade" was more the weapon they used and not the job itself, and he liked the idea of "Breaker" as it conveyed the sense of someone who was the vanguard that led the charge into battle and broke through the enemy lines.

This is dependent on my very limited knowledge of Japanese, but... laying it out like that reminded me that a manga author is called a "mangaka", so is that a general suffix for a person that does a thing?

If so, Yoshida's reason for choosing the name might be one element of it, but it's also something of a pun that resolves to an English word.

Or you can just put it down to Japanese people liking to use English words in things, but not necessarily understanding whether it sounds right to a native speaker. (I assume this is how we ended up with "tomestones", for example.)

Gunbreaker gunblades and Garlean gunblades are nothing alike.

That doesn't mean there's no connection between them. It's still likely that they were invented by one of those two civilisations, then the idea was taken and adapted by the other.

[Darkpaw]

That doesn't mean there's no connection between them. It's still likely that they were invented by one of those two civilisations, then the idea was taken and adapted by the other.

Oh I'm not disputing that at all just clarifying that functionally they are nothing a like. It's very plausible that one inspired the other, or some such. Just making sure people don't think they are the same is all. lol

[TouchandFeel]

This is dependent on my very limited knowledge of Japanese, but... laying it out like that reminded me that a manga author is called a "mangaka", so is that a general suffix for a person that does a thing?

If so, Yoshida's reason for choosing the name might be one element of it, but it's also something of a pun that resolves to an English word.

Or you can just put it down to Japanese people liking to use English words in things, but not necessarily understanding whether it sounds right to a native speaker. (I assume this is how we ended up with "tomestones", for example.)

Japanese does use compounds like that for many descriptive nouns, for example "jin" added on to the end of a word to to make it a "person of" word it was added to.

As for "mangaka", it is comprised of the kanji 漫画家 which is made of the characters 漫 (man)画(ga)家(ka). "Man" refers the the idea of being aimless, pointless, without direction. "Ga" refers to images/pictures. "Ka" refers to the creation of/creator of images. So "manga" is "silly/pointless/not serious pictures" which is an interesting way to say basically cartoons. "Gaka" is a painter, illustrator, etc. So bring them all together and you end up with "mangaka".

However, I doubt that the "ka" in the Japanese name for Gunbreaker is a reference or play on of the "ka" in something like "mangaka". Such wordplay in Japanese tends to be done around the usage of kanji and how different kanji can phonetically sound the same but have very different concepts attached to them, with a very common way of doing it being taking a kanji in a word or phrase and swapping it out for another that sounds the same and therefore changing the meaning to make a pun.
Gunbreaker in Japanese was solely in katakana which is a phonetic alphabet and not a symbolic alphabet like kanji and is used often to phonetically sound out foreign words, so the chances of such wordplay are pretty low.
Here's a silly little example of Japanese wordplay courtesy of Record of Lodoss War.
Dark Knight in Japanese is 暗黒騎士 (ankoku kishi). Now swap out the kanji for darkness (ankoku) with 餡 which is "an" as in anko or sweet bean paste and クック which is katakana for "kuku" or cook and you get 餡クック騎士 (ankuku kishi) which roughly translates in a pun sort of way to bean paste cook knight.

As for "tomestones" and a lot of the English names for things in the game, those come from a native English speaker, Michael Koji Fox, who is American. Many of them are just obscure references or English wordplay. It has nothing to do with Japanese persons flubbing the English language.
Looking at "tomestones", it is simply the combination of the word tome, a book/collection of knowledge, and the word stone, which creates a word that is a pretty apt description of what tomestones are in the lore, being stones holding ancient Allagan knowledge sort of like magical stone thumbdrives. The fact that it sounds like tombstone is just bonus pun points.

[Azerhan]

It conceptually translates to "Gunblade" in the French and German translations.
Revolverklinge --> revolver/gun + blade/sword
Pistosabreur --> pistol/gun + sabre/blade

Japanese translation is basically "Gunbreaker"
ガンブレイカー --> ガン (gun) + ブレイ (buh-reh) + カー (kah) --> it's literally just gunbreaker in katakana

As to why "Gunbreaker", if I recall correctly Yoshi-P felt "Gunblade" was more the weapon they used and not the job itself, and he liked the idea of "Breaker" as it conveyed the sense of someone who was the vanguard that led the charge into battle and broke through the enemy lines.

Tbh, in french, the "-eur" would be translate to "-er" in english, for Gunblader. Or else, it would be "Pistosabre". The -eur means that the world is for the one who wields the Gunblade. So in french, the weapon's name is "Pistosabre", and the job "Pistosabreur".

[gman1311]

I was just thinking about it today, gunbreaker is a really odd name. Gun obviously comes from using a gunblade, but why breaker?

It honestly makes me wonder if the name is the same in other languages or if this is another case of the localisation team trying to be creative (is it actually gunblader and they just thought that sounds stupid?).

I feel like there are much better names they could have gone with, maybe something like magitek knight, the gunblade looks like it’s going to be a magitek based weapon, much like the machinist guns, using aetherially charged cartridges to power the weapon. And one of the inspirations for the job is Seifer from ff8 who always dreamed of becoming a knight.
Or maybe mercenary, since again the job is based on Seifer and squall who were members of the mercenary group SEED.

I just don’t see how they decided on gunbreaker for the name, it’s not like it’s going to be some anti-ranged tank that goes around smashing peoples guns. I just wonder where that choice came from.

Because it sounds badass!

[Nedkel]

Because when you defend yourself from enemies you break your weapon.

[OcieKo]

Because when you defend yourself from enemies you break your their weapon.

Fixed.
I always took the name to be their purpose was to break firearms, or limit the effectiveness of firearms used against them. More like the "break" in "breakwall".