to_aru -> toaru (various tags including index)

BUR #4520 has been approved by @NWF_Renim.

とある should be romanized as "toaru" rather than "to aru"

As far as I could see, for the listed copyrights we're the only major website that uses "to aru" instead of "toaru".

For index and related copyrights specifically, the only topic I could find was topic #4722.

References:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Certain_Magical_Index
• https://myanimelist.net/anime/4654/Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index
• searching for "to aru majutsu no index" on google redirects you to the toaru variant
• even amazon autocomplete says "toaru" even when "to aru" is typed
• google translate (as far as we can trust it) displays the romanization as a single word

This goes for the other copyrights too, for example for To Aru Hikuushi e No Koiuta google redirects you to the Toaru variant, and wikipedia agrees.

I'm sure I'm outvoted, and I can't argue against real-world usage elsewhere, but grammatically this doesn't make a lot of sense. The "to" here is a particle, and "aru" a separate verb, in almost all cases these are separated by spaces when romanizing Japanese. "To aru" is sort of an idiom in this case, but I don't see that as a good reason to ignore the rule. I can't say it's the biggest deal, but the "toaru" romanization rubs me the wrong way knowing the words behind the phrase.

Shinjidude said:

I'm sure I'm outvoted, and I can't argue against real-world usage elsewhere, but grammatically this doesn't make a lot of sense. The "to" here is a particle, and "aru" a separate verb, in almost all cases these are separated by spaces when romanizing Japanese. "To aru" is sort of an idiom in this case, but I don't see that as a good reason to ignore the rule. I can't say it's the biggest deal, but the "toaru" romanization rubs me the wrong way knowing the words behind the phrase.

I found a pretty interesting discussion here, on the wikipedia talkpage for the entry, about why it's "toaru" vs "to aru".
The most relevant part for us is at the end, I'll copypaste it here. It's two emails:

That's a good question. My initial reaction was to think of と as a particle and the expression "～と ある", which isn't common but used. To tell the truth, I don't recall ever having seen とある at the start of a phrase before, so I looked up my advanced grammar dictionary, which had nothing, and then I turned to ALC:
http://eow.alc.co.jp/%E3%81%A8%E3%81%82%E3%82%8B/UTF-8/?ref=sa
Here it shows many uses of the phrase, which I think pretty conclusively shown that used in this way, the appropriate romanization would be "Toaru" to my mind. I can appreciate that the origin of the word probably came from combining the particle and the phrase, but it is clearly used most often in a non-particle context as a stand-alone word. The basic definition is instructive:
1. certain
2. this〈話〉〔打ち解けた会話で何かを新たに提示。テレパシーでも使えるかのように、思い浮かべているものを指す。記憶・心象を包み隠さない親密感と、多少のなれなれしさを伴う。文法的にはa, anで置換可能。〕
Meaning 1 seems the most instructive - if you look at all the sample phrases, "とある公園で", とあるクラブに", the use seems to be "we went to a CERTAIN park", or we "entered a CERTAIN club" even though the "certain" can be used or left silent, it seems most often to mean "a certain".
The longer explanation under 2 points out it that it is used to recall a particular thing being drawn out of memory, and to express that idea of recalling that place, and that it can most often be translated as "a" or "an".
Given that the word almost never follows or folds into a sentence as a particle, it is clearly used in a stand-alone manner and I would suggest, based on the very detailed ALC definitions and sample phrases, it is almost certainly best romanized as "Toaru" and NOT "-to aru"

and

Sorry for not getting back to you earlier. We starting investigating this matter last week, but it turned out to be a tricky question and it took us some time to get to the bottom of the matter.
The current TO ARU romanization of the TV series was simply based on the same romanization of the manga, submitted by Kyoki69 on 2007-09-30 and which gives http://www.project-index.net/ as source (and there is no romanization on that site).
Both TOARU and TO ARU sound like reasonable romanizations. According to a Japanese native, とある has basically the same meaning as ある except that it sounds more "literary". So one could easily think of とある as being ある with と as a prefix and romanize them separately. This is further complicated by the fact that there is no official romanization; or rather the official romanization is "Index Librorum Prohibitorum", which gives us no clue about the romanization of とある.
But on the other side,
1. とある is one word in the dictionary;
2. aforementioned Japanese native said it should be TOARU;
3. We contacted the Taiwanese licensor and they said while there's no official romanization of とある from the Japanese companies, it is better to be romanized as one word i.e. "Toaru" instead of "To Aru."
So in conclusion we will change the ANN romanization to "Toaru". You can use the information above as you wish on wikipedia.
Yours in anime,
Daniel DeLorme
Webmaster & Chief Encyclopedist

Basically "toaru" here is a single word rather than a particle and a verb. It's a similar situation to how in english you say "Hello everyone" and not "Hello every one".

On the same wikipedia talkpage it is mentioned that toaru (とある/と或る) is adnominal adjective (rentaishi). Single word seems to be the right way to romanize it.

The bulk update request #4520 (forum #179586) has been approved by @NWF_Renim.

Reminder that when something like this is approved, someone needs to go through all the wikis and fix all of them to use the new spelling.

This entails:

• Going to all the wikis for the old tags, clicking "What Links Here", and fixing any wikis still linking to the old tags.
• Going to all the wikis for the the new tags, and making sure they use the new spelling in all places.
• Going to all the wikis for the the new tags, clicking "What Links Here", and making sure all wikis linking to those wikis also use the new spelling.

Yes, this is no fun. This is why requests like this take a lot of work to approve.