Thread:The S/@comment-995426-20181204095605/@comment-995426-20181205063305

I've done some more research on the name Yuuta here, and my more recent suspicions were warranted. I'll take a moment to explain.

ll of these names are analyzed phonetically as ゆうた yu-u-ta. And all are pronounced, essentially two syllables to Western ears or three morae in the Japanese language. It would seem like a logical natural assumption that all these names are to be spelt Yūta in conventional romanization, right? But the problem is, in the standard Hepburn romanization system, a sequence of uu is only condensed to ū if it forms a long vowel within a morpheme; for example, if the name were analyzed yuu-ta, then a spelling of Yūta would be appropriate. But if the name were to be analyzed as yu-uta, then it must be romanized Yuuta even if it's pronounced the same as Yūta. And while many Japanese kanji spellings for this name can be analyzed as yuu-ta (佑多、佑太、佑汰、侑太、侑汰、優太、優汰、勇太、勇汰、勇田、友太、友汰、夕田、宥太、悠多、悠太、悠汰、憂太、有太、湧太、由大、由太、祐多、祐太、祐汰、祐田、結太、裕大、裕太、遊太、雄大、雄太), some can be analyzed as yu-uta (佑歌、由歌 which I've found so far). The names ending with 歌 uta, "song," are so far all chiefly feminine, but I can't assume my research is exhaustive, or that there are or can be no Japanese men's names whose last kanji is read uta instead of ta.

The problem with Hamato Yuuta is that we don't know how his name is spelled in kanji, so we can't use that to infer whether Yuuta or Yūta would be a more proper romanization. But we do know that the show's writers opted to spell his name Yuuta instead of Yūta. Which means I injected possibly erroneous assumptions in my decision to rename the article from Hamato Yuuta to Hamato Yūta.  Until we have more information, I think the article should be renamed back to Hamato Yuuta, and references fixed, in keeping with the only authoritative spelling we are certain of.

Since this past moment of gun-jumping arrogance, I have become more careful in "correcting" spellings. I'll add markings to Japanese and Okinawan terms that have them by convention (bō, tonfā, etc.), and to real world locations (Tōkyō, etc.), but not to Japanese names of fictional characters like Koya, even knowing her name's hiragana is こうや, meaning the proper romanization would be Kōya. So while Kōya makes an interesting footnote, it seems more appropriate to reference her name as "Koya" in general article mention. (Of course, I could also return to DeviantArt and ask Sophie Campbell for her opinion on the matter.)