kaiou_michiru alias

Currently kaiou_michiru is aliased to kaioh_michiru. As the proper romanisaton is the former, albert, could you switch the aliases around?

Done.

Thanks.

For these to be consistent, the meioh_setsuna alias also needs to be reversed to meiou_setsuna. Also, tenoh_haruka is aliased to tennou_haruka, which is incorrect. It should be tenou_haruka (actually ten'ou_haruka to be precise, though I don't know if the apostrophe is allowed on Danbooru).

Also on the subject of reversing aliases, could the riesz->liese alias be reversed as well? Both are acceptable romanizations (among many) for her name, but I think "Riesz" is far more common, and I've seen it around Japanese sites I've checked quite often.

Ah, well-spotted. And yes, apostrophes are acceptable, the only character you can't input is space.

About apostrophes in names, they're quite rare (usually I see them in variants of Junichi and such), so I'm curious where they come from. As in, what combination of sounds results in it?

Is it just ん before a vowel? In that case, does the apostrophe actually serve a real purpose?

Yes and yes. The pronunciation of んおう and のう is not identical, though in normal speech it probably wouldn't be very noticeable a difference.

Ah right. I knew they were different, even though they'd sound similar. So yeah from the perspective of romanization it makes sense, as tenou could as easily be てのう or てんおう. Thanks.

By the way, the "oh" spellings are used in the anime whenever the names are written out using Latin characters. For example, when Usagi sees Michiru's art at the museum, it's credited to "KAIOH". But the more common romanisation is fine.

Yeah, the "oh" spellings are official in the case of Sailor Moon. It seems Danbooru likes to use consistent romanization style over official variations when it comes to Japanese names.

On the apostrophe thing, I asked mainly because it doesn't seem to be used too often on Danbooru in cases where it can, for instance Sanzen'in Nagi in Hayate no Gotoku (not that I suggest there has to be a change there).

Wikipedia has a little breakdown on "oo" vs "ou" vs "oh" vs "ō" vs "ô". They seem biased toward the macron.

The following methods of representing long vowels also commonly occur:

* Oh for おお or おう (Hepburn ō). This is sometimes known as "passport Hepburn", as the Japanese Foreign Ministry has authorized (but not required) this usage in passports [1]
* Ou for おう (also Hepburn ō). This is also an example of wāpuro rōmaji.
* Ô for おお or おう (Hepburn ō). This is valid Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki, but occasionally occurs in otherwise Hepburn-romanized words (as described above).

My personal take on the issue is that the reason "oh" exists, is to allow for a differentiation between "おう"　and "おお", while avoiding the fact that many foreigners would be likely to mispronounce "oo", wheras they probably wouldn't butcher "ou" so badly. "Oh" in English orthography sounds closer to what it should be.

e.g. someone who knew nothing about Japanese might pronounce "Toosaka" as [tusaka] = two-sock-uh

Doesn't make it right, but might explain it.

It would work if "oh" was only used for おお, but it isn't. It's mostly used for おう (mainly because it's used for all ō sounds, killing the original distinction's point, which is fairly useless to have anyway; the sound is still the same).

It seems that toono_shiki, toono_akiha and toono_minagi are all aliased to tohno_* versions. Albert, could you switch those around as well?

Toonie!