[romanization] yazawa_nico -> yazawa_niko

http://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/54658
A Japanese character with a Japanese name (https://mamasup.me/articles/45330, https://mnamae.jp/c/g_306b3053.html) which is not written in katakana. It's clearly stated in the romanization rules that all Japanese names should not be romanized based on the "official" spelling, but rather the standardized rules.

The same should be applied to Ayase_Eli -> Ayase_Eri, really. I saw there were doubts about the origin of her birthplace and name, but there is no indication that her name written in kanji is not the original one. Furthermore, even if it were of Russian origin, the name would be a shortened version of Эрика (Erika, not Elika).

I believe the official romanization takes precedence, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

CodeKyuubi said:

I believe the official romanization takes precedence, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Well, I can do that. howto:romanize "the Danbooru standard takes precedence over any officially provided spelling"

The Danbooru romanization standards are practical when dealing with the fact that different copyrights may choose to use different romanization standards. I don't believe they should apply to variant spellings that fall outside conventions, and are therefore clearly intentional.

As a cultural note, it's not at all unheard of for Japanese people with multicultural heritage to have a foreign name transcribed in kanji.

feline_lump said:
I don't believe they should apply to variant spellings that fall outside conventions, and are therefore clearly intentional.

The only relevant official spelling for Japanese names is the Japanese one i.e. にこ. What the official 'intentional' transcription might be is completely irrelevant. Of course they're going to make it fall outside of conventions, to make it seem more interesting. It's clearly stated that the romanization is to be done by the rules written on the wiki, for consistency's sake. That is practiced all over this site. For example http://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/22310, http://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/59917. Furthermore, let's take a character from the planned 3rd generation of Love Live, 優木 せつ菜 (Yuuki Setsuna). She's officially introduced by SUNRISE as Setsuna Yuki. Would you really have her tag with a shortened version of the romanization just to have it the same as the official spelling? Of course not.

feline_lump said:
As a cultural note, it's not at all unheard of for Japanese people with multicultural heritage to have a foreign name transcribed in kanji.

And I did address that. If it's indeed a foreign name and not Japanese (for which there's no evidence whatsoever), then it's Russian and it would be эри (Eri) from эрика (Erika), because that's an actual name.

Nutel said:

The only relevant official spelling for Japanese names is the Japanese one i.e. にこ. What the official 'intentional' transcription might be is completely irrelevant. Of course they're going to make it fall outside of conventions, to make it seem more interesting. It's clearly stated that the romanization is to be done by the rules written on the wiki, for consistency's sake. That is practiced all over this site. For example http://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/22310, http://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/59917. Furthermore, let's take a character from the planned 3rd generation of Love Live, 優木 せつ菜 (Yuuki Setsuna). She's officially introduced by SUNRISE as Setsuna Yuki. Would you really have her tag with a shortened version of the romanization just to have it the same as the official spelling? Of course not.

You don't seem to have a working understanding of how romanization standards work in a wider context. "Setsuna Yuki" is the product of two common variants in romanization (changing name order and truncating long vowels). "Tohsaka" and "Tohka" use a variant transcription of "oo". All of these variants are well-documented in the history of Japanese romanization as a practice, and are therefore almost always completely unintentional on the part of the creators. On the other hand, if a creator decides to use a variant spelling outside of the norm (e.g. Nico), it is almost certainly an intentional choice. This distinction is important when it comes to understanding why our sitewide romanization standards exist: we want to prevent others' haphazardly-enforced standards from making it difficult to search for characters, but we do not want to add to the confusion by forcing a standard for purely pedantic reasons.

A few tags where we use the same variant spelling: super sonico, niconico, luluco.

And I did address that. If it's indeed a foreign name and not Japanese (for which there's no evidence whatsoever), then it's Russian and it would be эри (Eri) from эрика (Erika), because that's an actual name.

The evidence that it's a foreign name is that the character is named Eli, she was born in Russia, and her nickname is Elichka. There is also no reason that her birth name couldn't be Элина, but that's really beside the point, since official information takes precedent over fan speculation.

feline_lump said:

it is almost certainly an intentional choice.
A few tags where we use the same variant spelling: super sonico, niconico, luluco.

An intentional choice needs to be defendable. For example, from the same series, the Kurosawa sisters. No one is going to argue about the spelling of their names, since they're clearly named after rare stones, and their names are in katakana. That's the important part. You can get away with a lot of shit as long as you put it in katakana.
From the tags you linked, Sonico is a screen name that was derived from NITRO SUPER SONIC. SONIC->Soniko makes less sense than SONIC->Sonico - justifiable, niconico is not a name of a character. It's a private company which can name itself whatever it wants, including any errors. Now Luluco is a bit tough. First of all, let's look at the ルル part. I'd like to use your argument about "intentional spelling" - r/l is confusing for the Japanese, and often interchanged. Therefore, it should theoretically be fixed. But you know why it's fine in this case? Because it's a katakana-written name in a future multicultural hub Japan, not the Japan we necessarily know.

The evidence that it's a foreign name is that the character is named Eli, she was born in Russia, and her nickname is Elichka. There is also no reason that her birth name couldn't be Элина, but that's really beside the point, since official information takes precedent over fan speculation.

Official information, eh? Let's see.

https://dic.pixiv.net/a/%E7%B5%A2%E7%80%AC%E7%B5%B5%E9%87%8C

生まれは日本だが、幼少期は父親の仕事の都合で幼稚園時代はロシアで過ごし、小学校時代に再び日本に戻ってきた。両親はロシア在住のため亜里沙と二人暮らしで日本の実家に住んでいる。

Turns out you're wrong. Born in Japan. Now, for the pet name Erichka, which is coincidentally also a pet name for Erika in slavic countries. Do I really need to say anything else?

Nutel said:

An intentional choice needs to be defendable. For example, from the same series, the Kurosawa sisters. No one is going to argue about the spelling of their names, since they're clearly named after rare stones, and their names are in katakana. That's the important part. You can get away with a lot of shit as long as you put it in katakana.
From the tags you linked, Sonico is a screen name that was derived from NITRO SUPER SONIC. SONIC->Soniko makes less sense than SONIC->Sonico - justifiable, niconico is not a name of a character. It's a private company which can name itself whatever it wants, including any errors. Now Luluco is a bit tough. First of all, let's look at the ルル part. I'd like to use your argument about "intentional spelling" - r/l is confusing for the Japanese, and often interchanged. Therefore, it should theoretically be fixed. But you know why it's fine in this case? Because it's a katakana-written name in a future multicultural hub Japan, not the Japan we necessarily know.

Here is all the defense we need for an intentional name choice: It is intentional. It's an entirely pointless endeavor to run a discussion on whether the author has the right to use the letter C whenever this situation pops up, and it's doubly pointless to have to "correct" every single translated post on a character with thousands of images already just to satisfy one person's extremely specific desires. Keeping variant spellings on the basis that they are intentional is beneficial to the vast majority of the userbase, as it prevents unnecessary conflicts and makes searching much easier.

However, if you are in desperate need for a canon justification: Variant transcriptions for aesthetic reasons are fashionable among Japanese musicians. For instance, Camui Gackt uses a very nonstandard transcription for his stage name, 神威楽斗. Spelling "Niko" as "Nico" is also fashionable, thanks to the cultural presence of Niconico.

Official information, eh? Let's see.

Turns out you're wrong. Born in Japan. Now, for the pet name Erichka, which is coincidentally also a pet name for Erika in slavic countries. Do I really need to say anything else?

It's been a while since I touched anything Love Live related, but the fact that Eli, while technically born in Japan, has Russian heritage and has lived in both Russia and Japan doesn't meaningfully contradict the idea that she would have a bilingual name. And again, Elichka can be a pet name for Elina, but even if this were not the case, the official knowledge that her name is meant to be spelled as Eli takes precedent over unofficial speculation.

feline_lump said:

Here is all the defense we need for an intentional name choice: It is intentional. It's an entirely pointless endeavor to run a discussion on whether the author has the right to use the letter C whenever this situation pops up, and it's doubly pointless to have to "correct" every single translated post on a character with thousands of images already just to satisfy one person's extremely specific desires. Keeping variant spellings on the basis that they are intentional is beneficial to the vast majority of the userbase, as it prevents unnecessary conflicts and makes searching much easier.

However, if you are in desperate need for a canon justification: Variant transcriptions for aesthetic reasons are fashionable among Japanese musicians. For instance, Camui Gackt uses a very nonstandard transcription for his stage name, 神威楽斗. Spelling "Niko" as "Nico" is also fashionable, thanks to the cultural presence of Niconico.

It's been a while since I touched anything Love Live related, but the fact that Eli, while technically born in Japan, has Russian heritage and has lived in both Russia and Japan doesn't meaningfully contradict the idea that she would have a bilingual name. And again, Elichka can be a pet name for Elina, but even if this were not the case, the official knowledge that her name is meant to be spelled as Eli takes precedent over unofficial speculation.

You are clearly grasping at straws here if you're putting stage names and given names on the same level. The only "official" given name, the only canon name the author could give them is in Japanese. Romanization of a given name is done by the rules. Your subjective decision of what is and what isn't intentional doesn't matter. They don't get to make up new rules, just like you or I can't do that. The word of the author is not the word of God. The rules exist exactly to prevent this sort of thinking. Kotori would not become Cotoli just on author's whim. As a stage name, it would of course be acceptable, but that's completely besides the point. In the end, if you want to ignore the site's rules in favor of your own personal opinions and preferences, that's up to you and the mods. I watched it when it aired, and only now noticed that it's tagged incorrectly here. I won't even mention that you still haven't provided any tangible proof of the second name being foreign, after incorrectly assuming that she's a foreigner in the first place.

As far as I'm aware, a lot of booru's "rules"/guidelines are subject to change as particular use cases pop up. Namely, whatever happens to be the most commonly seen and convenient name to use (although there are exceptions) as name tags are inevitably there to make posts easier to search on. While there's no doubt 絵里 can be read as Eli, the franchise commonly provides the romanization of her name as "Eri" in numerous other formats consistently (note: not fateverse where romanizations are clearly a clusterfuck).

A number of artists tend to do the same thing. Eventually the foreign-amalgamated reading of the name they provide becomes the norm among fans and followers despite all else. None are popping up in my head as of the moment (I could look if I tried, but) but they do exist. EDIT: artist #11160 is one of them.

Still though, "grasping at straws"... This, I suppose, is the kind of behavior that eventually locks a thread. This might've been mentioned before, but tags are often less about "correctness", more about usability.

Nutel said:

You are clearly grasping at straws here if you're putting stage names and given names on the same level. The only "official" given name, the only canon name the author could give them is in Japanese. Romanization of a given name is done by the rules. Your subjective decision of what is and what isn't intentional doesn't matter. They don't get to make up new rules, just like you or I can't do that. The word of the author is not the word of God. The rules exist exactly to prevent this sort of thinking. Kotori would not become Cotoli just on author's whim. As a stage name, it would of course be acceptable, but that's completely besides the point. In the end, if you want to ignore the site's rules in favor of your own personal opinions and preferences, that's up to you and the mods. I watched it when it aired, and only now noticed that it's tagged incorrectly here. I won't even mention that you still haven't provided any tangible proof of the second name being foreign, after incorrectly assuming that she's a foreigner in the first place.

Not really sure what you’re after, but “こ” can be romanized as “ko” or “co”. It really comes down to which looks best.
Citation: Conversations with Japanese speakers.

Mikaeri said:

As far as I'm aware, a lot of booru's "rules"/guidelines are subject to change as particular use cases pop up. Namely, whatever happens to be the most commonly seen and convenient name to use (although there are exceptions) as name tags are inevitably there to make posts easier to search on. While there's no doubt 絵里 can be read as Eli, the franchise commonly provides the romanization of her name as "Eli" in numerous other formats consistently (note: not fateverse where romanizations are clearly a clusterfuck).

A number of artists tend to do the same thing. Eventually the foreign-amalgamated reading of the name they provide becomes the norm among fans and followers despite all else. None are popping up in my head as of the moment (I could look if I tried, but) but they do exist. EDIT: artist #11160 is one of them.

Still though, "grasping at straws"... This, I suppose, is the kind of behavior that eventually locks a thread. This might've been mentioned before, but tags are often less about "correctness", more about usability.

+1, especially for the part in bold. Usability absolutely comes first. The guidelines we have may represent an appropriate standard for usability in 98% of cases, but we're still going to have that remaining 2% we haven't accounted for. In those cases, whatever serves the best interests of the community takes precedent.

Wikipedia has a very good article about this that I believe is equally applicable to any large, crowdsourced project.

So basically you're admitting that you're wrong, but you want it this way because "it's always been this way" and "people are used to this". That kind of thinking is very unfortunate. Let me ask you, do you think general grammar rules can be ignored in an official setting because of subjective views of its speakers? To quote the wiki page: The main goal of this system is consistency. And you want to sacrifice this norm in favor of chaos of anarchy. Who exactly would be the one to decide in every single case when to ignore the romanization wiki page, which speaks very clearly on this matter, in favor of made-up spelling now and in the future? Either way, this move from a logical detailed system should definitely be documented on that page. Feel free to add the sentence "These rules are to be ignored on a case-by-case basis"
"These romanization rules have been worked out as the site grew, and there are still many tags that are not compliant with the guidelines. If you spot any poorly romanized tags, please post a message in the forum."
I did my part. If you don't want to comply, it's on you.

?
I thought Ceres said that the character in question can be written as "ko" and "co" likewise.
Where is this wrong now?

Nutel said:

blah blah blah

What I'd like you to do is to reach into your behind, grab whatever's in it with a tight fist, and pull it out. For a less terse response:

Nobody has ever admitted that it's "always been this way" and that "people are used to this", there have been numerous occasions where such a change could go both ways. In fact, I have done the same thing multiple times, but I have always put careful thought and support behind my arguments for them.

Let's get this straight here. The norm is USABILITY, not CORRECTNESS. None of this "anarchy" thing you're spouting. This is the reason we have things like aliasi and implications, because things can and will be ambiguous. We, as a community of contributors and users of this site, have to decide, painstakingly at times, what to go with. And even then these change down the line as bad decisions are amended and good ones are flipped.

If you want to push support for an alias that suits your needs, then feel free to. If you want correctness, go complain to the actual media franchise that pushes her name as such and force them to make it consistent, and then convince all of the love live fans that you know better than them what a single character's name is, just to inconvenience everyone else on every other site that provides her name as such. I'm sure it's a "made-up" spelling, given how non-prevalent it is.

If her name was blatantly read wrong, then I'd agree with you, but sadly this is not the case. This thread seems like your sorry excuse of how you know any better than the rest of us who have been here and thought differently. If you don't want to comply, that's on you. Everyone else did their part too.

E: Or maybe not. Sorry.

Since it was mentioned, putting a clause in our romanization guide about names that consistently use a nonstandard romanization would be a good idea. Other than that...

A debate is not a game of Calvinball where you can change the rules at any time, score as many arbitrary points as you want, and then "win". The underlying assumption that Danbooru has a moral obligation to follow howto:romanize exactly to the letter has been challenged by every other person in this thread, and nothing has been said to suggest that it is in our best interest to do so. Unless a concrete justification - beyond "this shouldn't be allowed because I don't like it" - can be made as to how the benefits of this alias would outweigh the inconveniences brought up in this thread, it isn't likely to go anywhere.

Mikaeri said:
just to inconvenience everyone else on every other site that provides her name as such.

Funny you mention that, since the two sites I know of which use the exact same romanization system as this site, anidb and MAL, have their names written and Niko and Eri. But sure, let's make two exceptions because the "people" know better than what the norms are. Because it's not like it's an objective fact that majority of people don't know and don't care about how to romanize. They either use whatever they were given first by the fansubbers or what's official. I don't know why you seem to think it's a personal issue for me, when I'm simply trying to correct something that's objectively wrong by the rules of this site. You and feline here, on the other hand, would clearly hate it if the romanization system was followed. Any other names you would like changed because of your personal feelings?

You could've presented your arguments in a neutral way and people would've gladly discussed them like they do anything else in this forum until an agreement was reached. Instead you demanded your proposition to be taken for law and started being aggressive as soon as your argument was challenged.

I can't see how this topic now could head in any direction other than your opinion being ignored on account of you attacking pretty much every single person who participated in it.

See also: topic #6690.

Nutel said:

Funny you mention that, since the two sites I know of which use the exact same romanization system as this site, anidb and MAL, have their names written and Niko and Eri. But sure, let's make two exceptions because the "people" know better than what the norms are. Because it's not like it's an objective fact that majority of people don't know and don't care about how to romanize. They either use whatever they were given first by the fansubbers or what's official. I don't know why you seem to think it's a personal issue for me, when I'm simply trying to correct something that's objectively wrong by the rules of this site. You and feline here, on the other hand, would clearly hate it if the romanization system was followed. Any other names you would like changed because of your personal feelings?

For the record, I can read Japanese. I know what the romanization rules are, and I know where they apply and when exceptions can be made. There is no "objectively" wrong way to go about this on the site. The vast majority of sitegoers and contributors present here prefer it being left the way it is, so there's nothing "personal" about any of this aside from you trying to force this down other people's throats because "it's clearly the rules". How about this for starters: those clauses were written years ago when consistency was probably an inherent goal of the site as most things weren't standardized. We can start by making some changes. Here, I'll even make some of the appropriate changes right now.

Any other names I'd like changed, eh let's start with you. How about "Nutel" -> "Nuthing will be done", because clearly that's where this discussion has went.

Requesting a lock on this thread since this is unproductive. @ShadowbladeEdge @OOZ662 @EB @Apollyon