What is the official spelling of names?

[Paulo Gabriel]

I don't know if this is worth a thread, but I have seen some people online refer to Namek as Nameck, in a brazilian db forum. I know it probably varies from whatever you're from, but not even in the offical manga version of Brazil it's called ''Nameck''. One of the persons who used it was a Japanese though (even though he was posting on a brazilian forum).

Anyway, for the lexicon experts here (lol), is NameCK an acceptable transliteration(?) from the original Japanese manga? And what about Kaiou (as in, ''Planet Kaiou'')?

(This is supposed to be a general thread for anyone who wants to ask these kind of questions, hence the title).

*Just waiting for Herms or VegettoEX to pop in.*

[TheGreatness25]

I'm no "lexicon expert," but why would "Nameck" make any less sense than "Namek?" The true official way of spelling the characters' names are with Japanese characters. So I've always been of the mindset that as long as the names' pronunciations are kept intact, why not? "CK" produces the same sound as "K" -- it's a little redundant, but why not? You said it was from a Brazilian dub, so maybe that's how they have it over there. For the Latin American dub, it's "Freezer" with an "R" at the end. Is that proper? Well, not really when up against the original "Freeza" or even "Furiza" pronunciation of the name, but it's official for the Latin American dub. In the Latin American dub, Kuririn is also "Krilin." We can argue all day about whether or not Funimation used the proper spelling for Kuririn's name to begin with, but would you say that there is a difference between "Krilin" and "Krillin?" Again, the true official spelling is with Japanese characters, thus recreating the pronunciation using our letters is as close as you're gonna get.

At least that's how I look at it.

[VegettoEX]

"What is the official spelling?" is a pretty loaded question, particularly because some names can be (and are!) spelled differently in Japan depending on which company is producing which type of merchandise. "Gokou" is one of the only non-obvious, very consistent spellings... versus something like "Broly" and "Brolly" and "Broli" and "Brawley" which have all been used at different points in time.

At Kanzenshuu we certainly think we are using the "best" spellings for MOST names, but each of them could probably have entire threads dedicated to them. For this, I'll just answer the two specific examples you're referencing.

Planet of the Slug People

The planet's name in Japanese is ナメック. When you transliterate/romanize that into our alphabet, that comes over as namekku (ナ is "na" / メ is "me" / "ク" is "ku" with the preceeding ッ indicating a geminated, hard, "double-consonant" sound, so "kku"). When you want to "adapt" that spelling into something more readable for "our language", you have a variety of choices:

• You can simply leave off that trailing, open-vowel sound inherent to Japanese, and wind up with "Namekk"
• You can do the same thing as above, but because our "k" sound is already rather inherently harsh, just drop off the extra one and have "Namek"
• You can do a similar thing to the above, but if you want to really preserve the look of the hard sound, but think maybe a double-"kk" looks silly, adapt it as "Nameck"

For what it's worth, in case you (or anyone else) doesn't know, the planet's name is a play on ナメクジ (namekuji), which means "slug". Toriyama adapts words into name puns in the series through a variety of means: sometimes it's elongating a vowel, sometimes it's doubling-up a consonant sound, sometime's it's rearranging syllables, etc.

We actually drop double-consonants fairly often with lots of spellings in Dragon Ball. Goku's original Saiyan name is カカロット (kakarotto); notice that same ッ in there. You can go with the direct romanization if you want, sure, but lots of folks will go with "Kakarot" (or "Kakarrot" to mirror a "carrot" spelling more closely). Again, our ending "t" sound is already pretty harsh just like our ending "k" sound, so you don't really NEED to double it up when "spelling" it our our alphabet.

The Kanzenshuu style guide for the name? We just use: Namek

The Catfish God Who Is Not But Is Sorta Neptune But Not Really Long Story Nevermind

The other character you reference has a title of 界王. The two kanji there are 界 (kai) meaning "world", and 王 (an extended "o" syllable so "ō" or "oo" or "ou" depending on your transliteration style) meaning "king" or "lord". So... he's the "Lord of Worlds" (as Viz often translates it out)!

So with regard to long vowel sounds:

When I was first taking Japanese, the teacher had us romanize them as a double version of the same letter. In this case, we would have romanized 王 as "oo". This isn't actually all that common of a romanization style near as I can tell. The modern Hepburn style will have you adapt this with a macron for a diacritical mark, so you get "ō". If for some reason you can't use diacritical marks, you would probably most often write this out as "ou". All of those are pronounced exactly the same way: they're all an extended "o" sound.

("oo" really isn't preferred, because especially "in English", you might see that and just naturally assume it sounds like the "oo" in "moo" like the cow onomatopoeia, which it absolutely does not!)

The Kanzenshuu style guide for the name? We use: Kaiō, and like Viz, occasionally translate out the title's description as a lord of worlds.

Different Dubs, Different Spellings, But We Don't Really Care About Them!

I think the best example to showcase spellings versus pronunciations and how different countries can all mess it up is the name of Vegeta's race: サイヤ人. That (made-up) name has a VERY obvious, distinct, and correct pronunciation. When it gets transferred to other countries and other languages for other dubs and translations, you can wind up with all sorts of things!

• In Japan, they romanize it out in our alphabet as "Saiyan" (and have pretty consistently, since pre-FUNimation days). The made-up サイヤ (sa - i - ya) part in katakana is adapted over as-is, while the 人 (in this case read as jin) character is adapted from its meaning in Japanese (it being "person"), similar to how we have an "American" coming from "America".
• Some foreign dubs don't even bother adapting the 人 kanji and carry over the entire word as-is! Pretty sure the Mexican TV series dub and (parts of?) the German manga translation all use Saiyajin as the complete race name, pronounced as-is, exactly like it is in Japanese.
• FUNimation's English dub uses the (very appropriate!) transliteration and spelling/meaning adaptation of "Saiyan"... except they don't pronounce the first part correctly (as "say - in" rather than something more akin to "sigh - ahn").

For us at Kanzenshuu, while we're certainly aware of the spellings and translations used by both FUNimation and Viz, we do not feel beholden to them in any way whatsoever. Sometimes we line up, and sometimes we don't. We want our spellings to preserve the pronunciation and to preserve the pun as much as possible, while still being readable and obvious.

(I... think?... that answers everything...?!)

[cheddarsword]

VegettoEX nailed it for the most part. Here's a few more interesting bits for you though.

For instance, he mentions how Saiyan is the English way of saying Saiyajin because that's how our language interprets it. Interestingly enough, Son Goku is the same thing. It's the Japanese method of saying Son Wukong.

Heh, Imagine my surprise playing Warriors Orochi 3 and having Sanzang talk to Son Wukong only to hear her say "Son Goku". "The hell did she call him Goku for!?"

Also, as I was reading the Manga, I noticed that it wasn't called the Flying Nimbus but rather Kintoun. I later found out that it's actually spelled Kinto-un.

Here's a few more off the top of my head.

Beerus: Bills

Whis: Wis

Giru: Gill

Krillin: Kulilin

Frieza: Freeza

Korin: Karin

Nam: Namu

Bulla: Bra

If you're surprised about the variations in spelling, then let me help you a bit.

Usually, they rename the characters in translations so that you end up pronouncing the name the same way it's pronounced in japan. In most (BUT NOT ALL) cases, replace L with R and R with L and it will help some.

Take Beerus for example. Bills with Japanese pronunciation SOUNDS like Beerus.

Same thing with Giru being called Gill. Robots don't need gills, they need gears. Gear. Gear oo. Gearoo. Giru. The U being added on is just how you end certain words in Japanese. I'm sure someone far more versed in the language than I am can explain why. Frankly, I'd like to know myself because at times, the U is silent or barely sounded at all!

For instance, when mentioning Sasuke in Naruto, they don't say "Sa Soo Kay" they say "Sas Kay".

Interesting point on Bulla and Bulma though. Maybe it's just because they reference womens underwear, but the whole "see and say" effect is just ruined here. Say Bulma's name the way it's written.

Okay, now what part of that makes it sound like Bloomer? "Bu lu ma" should have become "Bluma" and "Bu Ra" should have become "Bra"

So really, it's less about how the names are spelled and more about how they're pronounced that matters. The problem comes from when people spell them wrong and as a result, pronounce them wrong.

[Paulo Gabriel]

You said it was from a Brazilian dub, so maybe that's how they have it over there.

No, actually what I said was that it was someone posting on a Brazlian DB (i.e. Dragon Ball) forum (such as this one, but with people writing in Portuguese, which is the native tongue of Brazil, no English), not ''db'' as in ''dub''.

(I... think?... that answers everything...?!)

You answered that Nameck was an acceptable spelling of the name, but didn't answer whether Kaiou was (unless I didn't spot the answer in your quite long post. AND I am talking about proper spelling for any given languague, not exclusively English.

[TheGreatness25]

You said it was from a Brazilian dub, so maybe that's how they have it over there.

No, actually what I said was that it was someone posting on a Brazlian DB (i.e. Dragon Ball) forum (such as this one, but with people writing in Portuguese, which is the native tongue of Brazil, no English), not ''db'' as in ''dub''.

I know... but it stands to reason that if it were a Brazilian DB forum, that whoever responded might have been going by the dub in Brazil... thus... that's why I said maybe that's how his name is spelled in the dub shown in Brazil.

[Gaffer Tape]

but didn't answer whether Kaiou was (unless I didn't spot the answer in your quite long post. AND I am talking about proper spelling for any given languague, not exclusively English.

I believe this is the part of Mike's post that answers your question:

If for some reason you can't use diacritical marks, you would probably most often write this out as "ou". All of those are pronounced exactly the same way: they're all an extended "o" sound.

[Paulo Gabriel]

So, bottom line, neither ''Nameck'' or ''Kaiou'' are incorrect, as far as ANY language is concerned? Or there could be exceptions?

[TheGreatness25]

I don't think that's what was said.

[VegettoEX]

So, bottom line, neither ''Nameck'' or ''Kaiou'' are incorrect, as far as ANY language is concerned? Or there could be exceptions?

I can't really speak to many other languages and what their inherent/explicit syllable/letter pronunciations are, but as far as a standard romanization into our alphabet (note: alphabet, not "language"), "Kaiou" is relatively standard as I explained before. "Nameck" is less so, but isn't "wrong"; it's just not standard as far as I was ever taught, but kinda falls in line with words with spellings like "quick" and "ticket" in English.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

Same thing with Giru being called Gill. Robots don't need gills, they need gears. Gear. Gear oo. Gearoo. Giru. The U being added on is just how you end certain words in Japanese. I'm sure someone far more versed in the language than I am can explain why. Frankly, I'd like to know myself because at times, the U is silent or barely sounded at all!

The rest of the post isn't too bad, but the Gill portion needed addressing. I know it seems to sound like it, but "giru/ギル" is not the Japanese approximation of the word gear; that would be "giya/ギヤ". The character wasn't really named with a specific pun in mind either, but for the simple fact that he makes "giru-giru" noises.

[Paulo Gabriel]

So, bottom line, neither ''Nameck'' or ''Kaiou'' are incorrect, as far as ANY language is concerned? Or there could be exceptions?

I can't really speak to many other languages and what their inherent/explicit syllable/letter pronunciations are, but as far as a standard romanization into our alphabet (note: alphabet, not "language"), "Kaiou" is relatively standard as I explained before. "Nameck" is less so, but isn't "wrong"; it's just not standard as far as I was ever taught, but kinda falls in line with words with spellings like "quick" and "ticket" in English.

That's not the point. It doesn't matter if there exists some English words that are spelled similarily. My question is if it can be, by any stretch, an inaccurate ''romanization into our alphabet'', as yourself put.

[Paulo Gabriel]

I can't really speak to many other languages and what their inherent/explicit syllable/letter pronunciations are, but as far as a standard romanization into our alphabet (note: alphabet, not "language"), "Kaiou" is relatively standard as I explained before. "Nameck" is less so, but isn't "wrong"; it's just not standard as far as I was ever taught, but kinda falls in line with words with spellings like "quick" and "ticket" in English.

That's not the point. It doesn't matter if there exists some English words that are spelled similarily. My question is if it can be, by any stretch, an inaccurate ''romanization into our alphabet'', as yourself put.

Still waiting for VegettoEX's reply...

[VegettoEX]

I don't know what else I can say. I feel like I'm answering and saying the same thing over and over again in slightly different ways.

(This is also why I hadn't replied to your pre-bump post; I have nothing to add.)

[Paulo Gabriel]

I don't know what else I can say. I feel like I'm answering and saying the same thing over and over again in slightly different ways.

(This is also why I hadn't replied to your pre-bump post; I have nothing to add.)

OK, I get it. ^_^