Double-checking the spelling from Magical Girl Witch Trials

BUR #50404 has been rejected.

rename saeki_miria -> saeki_millia
create alias saeki_miria -> saeki_millia

As of this BUR's making, Saeki Miria or Saeki Millia has 97 posts, well under 200 limit for renaming. I'm here to consider whether to rename and alias the existing tag into the new one, based on the spelling of the girls' names after the romanization, which includes Jogasaki Noah (ノア), Hasumi Leia (レイア), Housho Margo (マーゴ), Shito Alisa (アリサ), Tachibana Sherry (シェリー) and Sawatari Coco (ココ). The names of Nikaido Hiro, Natsume An-An, Kurobe Nanoka (and presumably her sister, who don't actually have a confirmed name), Tono Hanna, Hikami Meruru and Tsukishiro Yuki doesn't sound foreign enough in context to warrant such correction in pronunciation since it appears these are very likely the right spelling in the context of the game ("Hiro"/ヒロ might be spelled as "hero" though, which... great spoilers) - the only girl I'm not sure at all of naming is Sakuraba Ema, with her エマ that could just easily be spelled as "Ema" as it is "Emma" (looking at you, Emma Frost the White Queen) and yet it might feel the same ('cause it both sound the same since they're both identical in pronunciation). This leaves Miria/Millia as the most obvious odd one out, because ミリア (as written in katakana, as is the case with other girls too) seems to begging to be spelled as "Millia" yet we have so far been calling her as "Miria". It doesn't help that it's dangerously close to being "Miriam", but let's not get ahead of ourselves at that.

Is "Miria" still the right spelling? Or should we change that to "Millia" while we have the chance?

The current Manosaba character names are how their names are spelled in various official materials like the guidebook and merch, if there's an official English localization later on that chooses to translate their names differently then there would be a reason to change their names, but for now I don't think there is any.

Also rename followed by alias makes literally no sense.

ANON_TOKYO said:

Also rename followed by alias makes literally no sense.

Can you please tell me why?

nyom said:

The current Manosaba character names are how their names are spelled in various official materials like the guidebook and merch, if there's an official English localization later on that chooses to translate their names differently then there would be a reason to change their names, but for now I don't think there is any.

Then how did the names change? Where did the newest names come from?

topic #33075
https://web.archive.org/web/20250418090239/www.animate-onlineshop.jp/contents/fair_event/detail.php?id=113021

Aliasing an in-use tag to an unused tag does all the same functions as renaming.

Spatula22 said:

Aliasing an in-use tag to an unused tag does all the same functions as renaming.

Thanks!

nyom said:

The current Manosaba character names are how their names are spelled in various official materials like the guidebook and merch, if there's an official English localization later on that chooses to translate their names differently then there would be a reason to change their names, but for now I don't think there is any.

Is the BUR's suggested romanization correct, or should we trust the official guide (and possibly risk confusion because of syllables)? I thought I made the reason clear.

AbsoluteRainbow said:

Is the BUR's suggested romanization correct, or should we trust the official guide (and possibly risk confusion because of syllables)? I thought I made the reason clear.

We should be using official sources when possible instead of trying to make up our own interpretation. What confusion could there possibly be, when the current tag is one-to-one with how we would normally romanize it already?

As nyom said, if there's a more recent official romanization that does use your suggested spelling, please point it out. As it stands, there is no reason to change the current tag.

Edit: Heck, I even tried searching the suggested name, and this forum post came up third, with Google even saying "did you mean Saeki Miria?"

hasu_no_tokimeki said:
Heck, I even tried searching the suggested name, and this forum post came up third, with Google even saying "did you mean Saeki Miria?"

I found this: "YouTube - Aknososhiki Inc. Suisen Ctial - 3K+ views - 2 months ago - [#MagicalGirlWitchTrial/ManoSaba] What I like about Saeki Millia ♡ ..."

hasu_no_tokimeki said:

What confusion could there possibly be, when the current tag is one-to-one with how we would normally romanize it already?

Japanese syllables. L or R?

AbsoluteRainbow said:

I found this: "YouTube - Aknososhiki Inc. Suisen Ctial - 3K+ views - 2 months ago - [#MagicalGirlWitchTrial/ManoSaba] What I like about Saeki Millia ♡ ..."

OK, and? One random vtuber spelling it like that doesn't make you right.

Oh, and lemme just stick my reply to your DMail here, for posterity. You even made a VNdb account just for this farce. The edit in question.

I also asseted the merch. asset #31591119

hasu_no_tokimeki said:

OK, and? One random vtuber spelling it like that doesn't make you right.

Anibase did similarly with Ema.

Oh, and lemme just stick my reply to your DMail here, for posterity. You even made a VNdb account just for this farce. The edit in question.

I also asseted the merch. asset #31591119

I'mma stick my own response here. And that VNdb edit? Somebody chose to revert it, because the official romanization is considered 100% correct.

Looks like everyone's ignoring the confusion between the "l" and "r" in Japanese this time around, but at least thanks for the asset. Too bad nobody explained why "Miria" could've been a Japanese name at all - you already know why the BUR exists. It's to question whether the developers made a mistake.

I Googled out the most common usage of the literal Miria:

"Miria" in Japanese can be written in hiragana as みりあ and can be spelled with various kanji, such as 海莉愛 (sea, jasmine, love) or 美莉亜 (beauty, jasmine, a name suffix). The exact kanji used will determine the specific meaning of the name.
- Hiragana: みりあ (mi-ri-a)
- Katakana: ミリア (mi-ri-a)
- Possible Kanji combinations: 海莉愛 (\(mi\) = sea, \(ri\) = jasmine, \(a\) = love); 美莉亜 (\(mi\) = beauty, \(ri\) = jasmine, \(a\) = a name suffix); 深莉亜 (\(shi\) = deep, \(ri\) = jasmine, \(a\) = a name suffix); 美理愛 (\(mi\) = beauty, \(ri\) = reason/logic, \(a\) = love)

No confirmation nor any explanation why the original developers didn't just account for the L/R confusion and make the name Millia. Otherwise the BUR would never have been made.

AbsoluteRainbow said:

...

I'm just going to quote my DMail:

Is your point literally just "the name sounds kinda foreign, so I think the devs are confused"? Because that's all I'm hearing from this exchange. There is no point in "questioning the official romanization" like this. howto:romanize even states, "Should any official romanization exist, they take precedence over this standard."

Besides, "Miria" is a perfectly fine name, even if it isn't strictly Japanese. In fact, it's a perfectly fine foreign name. Just because the name coincidentally matches the literal romanization of the kana name doesn't mean it's wrong. If anything, I'd call that lucky (at least until you decided it was wrong and shoved your gripes down Danbooru's and even VNdb's throats).

AbsoluteRainbow said:

It's to question whether the developers made a mistake.

The audacity to think you know better than the creators of the work is something else.

WRS said:

The audacity to think you know better than the creators of the work is something else.

Hey, we have a precedent with Altria vs Artoria. Nothing is too farfetched when it comes to romanisation.

Key insist Rewrite's Nakatsu Shizuru be Sizuru but most of the internet ignore that too. The Japanese can be clueless about English and romanised names are basically just decoration. Then the English get it and they have to use those romanisations whenever they refer to the character. The Japanese see "Sizuru" once in Rewrite's OP, but the English see it every time she speaks or is spoken of.

There's lots of bad examples or just inconsistency. FFVII's Zack (actually "Zax") used to be written "Zack's" on merchandise. I would say the developers made a mistake.

That said, we don't stick with "Artoria" because "Altria" is wrong. It's because there was a big existing English fanbase that utterly rejected "Altria".

I guess those make for fair points, you're right. Romanisation is probably not one of those cases where the above statement applies.

So basically, we have a no-win, lose-lose scenario. Either we treat Saeki Miria's first name as foreign, or not, but that gives us problems.
- The dev route (Miria) would sacrifice the foreign-ness of the katakana used, in favor of the almost-common Japanese. "Millia" would've just sounded right, but Hasu insisted on letting the official romanization match the romaji. Because of the confusion between "l" and "r" in Japanese (specifically the fact that L and R both pronounced the same in Japanese), using "Miria" would dilute the foreign sound.
- The BUR route (Millia), on the other hand, fully preserve the foreign sounding altogether but relies on the aforementioned syllable confusion - after all, in Japanese, "l" and "r" both sounds the same and uses the same sets of kanas. This means that arguably the character herself would be like Tachibana Sherry in that regards, but there's literally no confirmation about their nationality whatsoever. And looks like Hasu have been confused as to why the BUR even exists in the first place even though I tried to make it clear - he believes the official romanization should be correct and should stay, as per howto:romanize.
- Both routes run afoul of different sets of confusions, as described above. And as BaiserLaVerite and Spatula22, while the romanization in Danbooru tends to follow the official sources, inconsistency can be a b*tch.

So yeah...

There's a difference between a long-established widely-agreed-upon questionable romanisation, and one where it's just one dude who talks like an LLM having a reading comprehension problem.

AbsoluteRainbow said:

Because of the confusion between "l" and "r" in Japanese (specifically the fact that L and R both pronounced the same in Japanese), using "Miria" would dilute the foreign sound.

Wait, wait, wait. Your entire problem is that "Miria" with an "r" doesn't look foreign enough???? That has got to be the stupidest argument I have ever seen.

hasu_no_tokimeki said:

Wait, wait, wait. Your entire problem is that "Miria" with an "r" doesn't look foreign enough???? That has got to be the stupidest argument I have ever seen.

It doesn't!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_of_English_/r/_and_/l/_by_Japanese_speakers