EB said:
ソーラ (Soora) is not ソラ (Sora)
Actually both way of spelling it is valid.
EB said:
ミートゥカ (Miituka) is not ミツカ (Mitsuka): if you didn't know, トゥ is a completely foreign sound to the Japanese language
No, Mituka/Mitsuka it is the same thing. The nowadays many Japanese names are written in katakana/hiragana and don't always even have kanji versions. It is the same kind of odd thing that is happening with Japanese surnames and given names. People born nowadays write their given name before the surname, but people born say in the 70s still write their surnames first.
The hiragana is the way the name is meant to be pronounced. But say 蜜花 can be pronounced both as Mituka and Mitsuka. When/if a name doesn't have any kanji, that does not mean that it isn't Japanese.
EB said:
these are not regular Japanese names.
umm no... there aren't many people named Mituka Sora, but Mituka is Japanese girls name and Sora isn't a super rare surname in Japan.
EB said:
It's a fantasy name much in the same way Twoearle and Acena are.
No, it is a real Japanese name chosen because it sounds like a foreign name. Sora (depending on the kanji?) Can be read as sky? But it can also be pronounced as Soooora (solar) It is a pun of sorts. Twoearl however is an alien as is Acena. Why would they have Japanese names? Souji however if he wanted to blend in wouldn't change his name into something foreign.
EB said:
If you spot a romanization of it in official Japanese materials that is different, then I'll prefer whatever spelling that is and admit I'm wrong here.
No that isn't how things work. Until official romanization of such names have been found, then we go by actual spelling... not the other way around. FUNimation have no relevance so we can't use it as a source, we do however have the actual Katakana... which is what we need to go by.
EB said:
An official name originating from a Western source (that in all likelihood still originates from the Japanese producers who licensed the title to them) is still preferable to an unofficial fan guess.
No, that isn't Danbooru policy. First of all, your assumptions regarding the origin is not proof so it can't be used to argue your point. Secondly it isn't a "fan guess", it is the actual way the Katakana spell out the name.
NWF_Renim said:
Personally I think it's another instance of someone throwing Japanese into google translate and just using whatever the output for English is, but since that is what they're running with officially, nothing much that can be done about it if both the Japanese and Official English agree on the same spelling for a Fantasy name.
But neither Sora nor Mituka are fantasy names... they are actual Japanese names.