Donmai

Mass update toosaka_* -> tohsaka_*, toono_* -> tohno_*

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BUR #2860 has been approved by @evazion.

remove alias tohsaka_rin -> toosaka_rin
remove alias tohsaka_tokiomi -> toosaka_tokiomi
remove alias tohsaka_rin_(cosplay) -> toosaka_rin_(cosplay)
remove alias tohno_shiki -> toono_shiki
remove alias tohno_akiha -> toono_akiha
remove alias tohno_mizuki -> toono_mizuki
remove alias tohno_shiki_(2) -> toono_shiki_(2)

Official spelling has been "Tohsaka" for more than a decade. Nobody uses "Toosaka" other than Danbooru.

EDIT: The bulk update request #2860 (forum #167966) has been approved by @evazion.

Updated by DanbooruBot

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nonamethanks Toctoc Unbreakable SSJG DeusExCalamus Admiral Pectoral Nacha 朝子 user 11314 blindVigil Astolfo Shinjidude Zurreak NWF Renim Mexiguy BrokenEagle98 Doragonn Hillside Moose
MyrMindservant

skylightcrystal said:

Indifferent to this update but there are a couple of prominent sites that use Toosaka:
https://myanimelist.net/character/498/Rin_Toosaka
https://anidb.net/character/241

Same for vndb: https://vndb.org/c34

I would advise people to read topics linked by Shinjidude, especially topic #1510, they include many arguments relevant to this issue.

Also, we only follow official romanization for foreign/non-Japanese names. In other cases we rely on Danbooru romanization guidelines howto:romanize.

Personally I'm in favor of keeping toosaka_rin, for the sake of consistency, as well as other reasons listed in aforementioned topics.

@Mysterious_Uploader
If you are going to include other characters in this, then please make it with separate BURs. Many people have already voted on this one with the assumption that it was specifically for Toosaka Rin.

Updated

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Shinjidude

To repeat, I don't especially like the "oo" in "Toosaka" here and as such I am not voting against this proposal.

Despite that, I would very highly support we stick to our general policy of following a standardized romanization system, since not doing so is rather anarchic, and we'd need a ridiculous number of aliases to cover all the ways people can, have, and do romanize Japanese in an ad-hoc manner.

For this reason, in general I also still support us using a standardized system over the "official" romaji spellings of native Japanese names. More often than not kanji or kana will be used, and the "official" romanization be an obscure case (often without much thought). In most cases, following the standard system for romanizing the kanji or kana will make more sense than following an official non-standard romanization scheme. Many Japanese people don't really seem to care what romanization system they use (especially since in practice they are used pretty infrequently), but that causes all kinds of confusion on our side. I'd be adamant against us switching "shi" for "si" or "tsu" for "tu" even though both are very common "word processor" styles of romanization (they also lead to bad pronunciation).

That said, (also mentioned in the old referenced topics) "おお" -> "oh" *is* a standardized romanization scheme, just not the one Danbooru decided to go with back in the day. In particular, the official system used by Japan for personal names in passports allows for "oh" (a modification of the Hepburn standard for Romaji). The passport system isn't perfectly consistent though since it also allows "oo" and "ou" (the latter I'd say still better for romanizing "おう"). It would also allow for oddness like "Tokyo" becoming "Tohkyoh" which looks really dumb to me.

I'm not sure without completely tossing the idea of a romanization standard entirely (which would be a bad idea), or poking in a bunch of exceptions (not great), that you'll ever get everything looking good to the majority of people though.

I sort of think that what we have works well enough, unless we want to go back to deciding the best romanization system for us again. If we did, I'd be fine with the above mentioned "passport" system, which would be a pretty minimal change at the possible expense of a bit of internal consistency.

This all being said is the reason that despite personally preferring "Tohsaka" to "Toosaka", I'm still not voting in favor of this alias proposal either.

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Shinjidude said:

I'm not sure without completely tossing the idea of a romanization standard entirely (which would be a bad idea), or poking in a bunch of exceptions (not great), that you'll ever get everything looking good to the majority of people though.

I feel like the best way to go would be to use official romanization when available and danbooru romanization when official romanization is not available.

This is the best way to go imo to not alienate ourselves with the users, but at the same time keep a standard when there isn't an official one.

MyrMindservant said:

If you are going to include other characters in this, then please make it with separate BURs. Many people have already voted on this one with the assumption that it was specifically for Toosaka Rin.

If Toosaka changes, the others will have to change too. Your proposal isn't wrong, but it was implied and would create unneeded extra work.

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Shinjidude

Mysterious_Uploader said:

I feel like the best way to go would be to use official romanization when available and danbooru romanization when official romanization is not available.

I'm not 100% on board with this because "official" romanizations can get very creative or inconsistent at times for no good reason, and while romaji is generally a rare exception in everyday Japanese that might be canonized by a single on-screen appearance of a name three quarters into a long running series or the like, romaji is the default case here and non-standardization can cause confusion here for no good reason.

With the concession to agree to change our official romanization system to the "passport" system (as an actual system and decent compromise) though, it would allow for official spellings like Tohsaka Rin and Azumanga Daioh without poking holes in our own policies.

If we went that route, I'd enthusiastically vote for this alias reversal.

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NWF Renim

I'm in support of Shinjidude's stance and I think it is reasonable to ask that we try and be consistent with the system that we use. The ramifications of the decision here will not be limited to just how this one character's name is romanized, but how we approach the romanization done on the site as a whole.

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MyrMindservant

nonamethanks said:

Those are 11 years old. The site has been slowly shifting towards following official translations, with the reason that it makes no sense not to when everyone but us knows and refers to a character by that name. See topic #15176, topic #16484 and topic #16483 for recent ones.

It does not matter how old they are. What matters are arguments presented in them.
And it has already been pointed several times that there are many other places that use "Toosaka" romanization. Like MAL for example, which is way bigger than Danbooru.

Using official romanization in all cases is a very bad idea. There is a good reason why most websites that deal with Japanese media (like anidb, MAL, vndb, Danbooru, etc) rely on a set of romanization guidelines instead of blindly following official spelling. Shinjidude has voiced some of the concerns here too.

That being said, howto:romanize currently has this paragraph:
"Note that exceptions can and will be made in the unique case where an artist, character, or copyright name has an alternate romanization that is consistent, prevalent, and significant by its copyright owner or publisher".

So this change can be accepted as an exception, without invalidating our approach to romanization in general. I just don't think that it should. Tohsaka is already present as an alias and this should be enough to deal with any searchability/confusion issues.

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I think all three of you are focusing on the wrong thing.
Danbooru should focus on user experience, not whatever we ourselves think is right.
Fate already has had it's fair share of changes from unofficial romanization to official, like meltlilith -> meltryllis.
If all fate fans use Tohsaka instead of Toosaka, why should we go "oh no the right spelling is actually Toosaka", completely ignoring any official spelling?
A counterpoint could be made for artoria/altria, but most people despise "Altria" as official romanization and prefer Artoria, which is what we're using.

In the end, i think Danbooru should use the romanization most used in the fandom.
A "consistency" could be set up for the series itself, but setting it up for the entire site feels a bit unneeded.

NWF_Renim said:

I'm in support of Shinjidude's stance and I think it is reasonable to ask that we try and be consistent with the system that we use. The ramifications of the decision here will not be limited to just how this one character's name is romanized, but how we approach the romanization done on the site as a whole.

If you want to head that way, i'd suggest to make another topic, to give the matter more attention.

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Shinjidude

Mysterious_Uploader said:

In the end, i think Danbooru should use the romanization most used in the fandom.
A "consistency" could be set up for the series itself, but setting it up for the entire site feels a bit unneeded.

I think we have a fundamental disagreement on this point, as I feel the exact opposite. Unless there's a very good reason otherwise (say it's a foreign word with an established foreign spelling or a completely made up katakana name), we should strive for consistency with the language, not with the specific copyright that might decide it's own rules for Japanese. I'm not dead set on which set of rules we follow (adding "oh" as acceptable romanization for "おお" as has been done officially elsewhere is fine in my book), but we should agree on one set of rules and use them, otherwise we become very inconsistent with ourselves. We should strive to minimize the exceptions to the the extent possible.

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NWF Renim

Mysterious_Uploader said:

A "consistency" could be set up for the series itself, but setting it up for the entire site feels a bit unneeded.

This makes me curious, how consistent has Fate or Type-moon properties been with the official romanization of names?

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NWF Renim

DeusExCalamus said:

Fairly, as far as I know, except for Altria/Artoria (gag.)

If we followed Shinjidude's suggestion on changing to this "passport" system for romanization, that sounds like it would probably mean then most cases from the Fate properties would be resolved then. Do we have an idea what kind of impact this might have with the romanization done for other series? Perhaps an easy check would be to focus on the impact on the top 5 or 10 other copyrights on the site if that would be helpful in narrowing down properties.

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