Lv Bu?

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Arcana55

The tag "Lu Bu" (for the historical figure) was renamed to "Lv Bu" last December, with no alias. Is there some unusual romanization rule being applied here? Was this change discussed, and is there a good reason for doing so?

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araneus

Well the historical figure '吕布' is Chinese, and in the standard Chinese romanization(Pinyin) its pronunciation will be 'Lü Bu'. In Pinyin 'ü' sounds < y > and 'u' sounds < u >. Therefore, Lu Bu is definitely wrong because it didn't distinguish between two different pronunciations.

As the letter "ü" is missing on most keyboards and the letter "v" is not present in standard Chinese pinyin, the letter "v" is used on most computer Chinese input methods to enter the letter "ü". This is probably why the previous user made such a change.

However, the official (but less common) practice currently is to use 'yu' to represent 'ü'.(like for Chinese name on passport ). So maybe we should go with Lyu Bu instead.

Updated by araneus

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Damian0358

I forget if this was mentioned in the aforementioned topic #35737, but that user did manually rename several real world historical Chinese figures to their preferred romanization, not just Lv Bu, to the point of forgetting to rename deleted posts. They even manually removed qualifiers added in forum #401591, such as Xiao Qiao and Da Qiao, and insists on rendering the SNK collab heroes in Wangzhe Rongyao in Chinese, like Xialuote (Charlotte Christine de Colde) and Buzhihuo Wu (Shiranui Mai). With the exception of Jin Jiao Dawang and Yin Jiao Dawang (adding 'Dawang' to the tag names), all their renames (noticeable from wiki edits) were from before 2026, so to check them you need to go into the 40-50 page range to get to the end of December at time of writing.

araneus said in forum #442562:

Well the historical figure '吕布' is Chinese, and in the standard Chinese romanization(Pinyin) its pronunciation will be 'Lü Bu'. In Pinyin 'ü' sounds < y > and 'u' sounds < u >. Therefore, Lu Bu is definitely wrong because it didn't distinguish between two different pronunciations.

It may be wrong in regards to not distinguishing pronunciations, but it's not wrong in terms of Danbooru practice. As discussed in topic #30058 and topic #29883, there's already an established practice of dropping diacritic markers (letting them go bald) because Danbooru tags don't have diacritic markers, and universally it's moreso a thing in the West than attempting to render the intended pronunciation in writing (induced in part by diacritic usage being more time-consuming). I brought up in the former thread the example of WW2 figure Göring here, because on Danbooru military users have opted to transliterate the umlaut as practice, so his tag renders it as Goering and not Goring, but Google results indicate the latter is used way more than the former, even though it doesn't reflect the pronunciation of his name.

Wikipedia renders his name as Lü Bu and makes no mention of alternate romanizations. Google knows when you're searching Lv Bu you're trying to get to Lü Bu, but the results otherwise go from "Chinese historical figure" to Casio calculators, paint, the few games going with that romanization, and literal Chinese websites. The Google results for Lu Bu align much more closely to Lü Bu than Lv Bu, and your proposed alternative of Lyu Bu leans closer to the former than the latter in Google results because it still has that u in it instead of a v. Everything indicates that going with Lu Bu is the more sensible option, pronunciation accuracy be damned.

Updated by Damian0358

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Spatula22

There are rules of romanisation systems which have ways to indicate differences in vowels without diacritics. But when dealing with the English language, diacritics are optional.

Some people online get pedantic about German and the added "e". But that's a rule of German, not English. "Schrodinger's cat" and "Mobius strip" are far more common than "Schroedinger's cat" and "Moebius strip". Not sure I've ever seen "doppelgaenger".

And obviously even the Japanese are prone to not indicating long vowels in any way when presenting names "in English".

The "v" thing also applies to Nvwa (Chinese Mythology) and Lv Meng. Koei just drop diacritics in their Chinese localisations.

Updated by Spatula22

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wavedash

BUR #60368 has been approved by @evazion.

rename nvwa_(chinese_mythology) -> nuwa_(chinese_mythology)
rename yang_yvhuan_(wangzhe_rongyao) -> yang_yuhuan_(wangzhe_rongyao)
rename zhou_yv_(wangzhe_rongyao) -> zhou_yu_(wangzhe_rongyao)
rename situ_lv -> situ_lu

Other random things. Sorry if this is annoying, but I split these into multiple BURs because I'm not familiar with a lot of these tags, so some of these could be mistakes on my part.

Situ Lu, for reference: https://myanimelist.net/character/159206/Lu_Situ

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Damian0358

Honestly, given that the user reverted BUR edits like those two in the aforementioned forum #401591, it might be better for all of these to be aliases, especially if the user themselves actually uses Lv Bu et al in their day to day. That prevents any manual reversions.

Also, you don't need rename lv_bu_(cosplay) -> lu_bu_(cosplay), the earlier BUR changing Lv Bu back to Lu Bu would've moved the cosplay tag too.

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araneus

Damian0358 said in forum #442671:

it might be better for all of these to be aliases, especially if the user themselves actually uses Lv Bu et al in their day to day.

I can do with that. At least adding them all as aliases would definitely make it easier for many Pinyin input users to find character tags quicker based on their input habits.

Updated by araneus

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Damian0358

araneus said in forum #442681:

I can do with that. At least adding them all as aliases would definitely make it easier for many Pinyin input users to find character tags based on their input habits.

Remember you can update BURs by linking the BUR # link and pressing Edit, as long as not that many people have voted on it.

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