Bulma or Blooma?

[samuraix123]

Hello Everyone!
I've noticed several people calling Bulma ''Blooma'' and out of curiosity, Why do some people call her that? Also this isn't an attack on people that may refer to her as ''Blooma'' Just curious is all.

[matt0044]

It's people feeling a need to use a "proper" romanization of the name. I don't really mind it but I myself use Bulma because you can say it derives from "Bloomers" even if it's not really the name itself.

[Gyt Kaliba]

Gaffer Tape has a really great explanation in one of his Dissection videos, but I can't for the life of me remember all the details, just that it's closer to the pun. I myself am just too used to using 'Bulma' to switch really, and with it still being that even in Japanese, I just can't break myself even if I did want to.

[Chuquita]

"Blooma" is way more fun to say than "Bulma" is, but as most of my fan-activities involve text as opposed to audio, and since I'm much more used to typing "Bulma", that's what I use.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

Toriyama wrote Bulma, so it's Bulma for me.

[VegettoEX]

Here's my take on it.

The character's name written out in katakana is ブルマ which you would directly romanize as buruma. We know it's a pun on the article of clothing, which itself is written out in katakana as ブルマー which happens to come out as burumā. Note the similarity (read: near-exactness).

(Though as Herms points out, it's sometimes written out exactly like the character's name as ブルマ and sometimes as ブルーマ and even sometimes as ブルーマー. For the sake of argument, we're going with ブルマー with the one elongated syllable at the end as our "official" spelling for the article of clothing.)

They're essentially the same, right? The character's name of ブルマ is just the article of clothing without an extended syllable at the end. If we'd adapt their adaptation of ブルマー (burumā) right back to our word of "bloomer"... well, wouldn't you keep the character's name the same except for that ending part? They both have ブルマ except for the clothing that extends it out at the end.

Logically, if you write ブルマー as "bloomer" you would have to write ブルマ as "blooma". The extended syllable at the end gets turned into "er" sounds. In this case, the "mā" is no different from the "zā" which we form "Zarbon" with and the "tā" that we form "Tarble" with: a short "ma" on the end for the character's name as opposed to the "mer" on the end with the clothing.

Where it gets funky is that Toriyama gives us a Latin-based spelling on her shirt: "BULMA".

That's all fine and dandy, except that foreign adaptations take that spelling and funk up the pronunciation. It's hard to get across in text, but her name in Japanese is nowhere near as overexaggerated with a "bull" or "bowl" sound that usually gets tossed around in English dubs.

One school of thought with Dragon Ball name spellings is to preserve a pronunciation above a spelling. You can go further and even arrange it by preserving a pronunciation, then bringing out a pun, then bringing out a spelling.

PUN BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE:
Examples include Viz's "Vegerot", where the original name and its pronunciation ("Vegetto") is completely abandoned in favor of exclusively bringing out the pun.

PUN INTO PRONUNCIATION BEFORE SPELLING:
Our own "Tullece" brings out the "lettuce" pun the name comes from and then goes on to preserve the pronunciation of the character's name. It doesn't resemble its tāresu romanization at all, but it doesn't need to.

"Blooma" falls somewhere in that latter category: it preserves the pronunciation and the pun without worrying too much about established spellings for the name. "Blooma" does a perfect job of slurring over the R/L switch-up to preserve where "bloomer" comes from, and just like the katakana, drops the "er" from the clothing to the "a" that's in the character's name.

That's a huge explanation to sum up a real simple thing: the character's name drops a "mer" to a "ma", so spell the rest of it the same. "Blooma". Done.

[samuraix123]

Wow! That's a-lot more info than I was expecting to see on a subject like this. Thanks for the info VegettoEX and everyone else!

[dbzfan7]

Bulma for me. I like the romanization better then saying Blooma

[Raykugen]

If Toriyama writes Bulma on his t-shirt is Bulma, if Toriyama writes Gokuh on Gokuh's cap, is Gokuh

[samuraix123]

Bulma for me. I like the romanization better then saying Blooma

I agree. I've just said and heard ''Bulma'' so many times that when I see ''Blooma'' it just strikes me as odd. I used to spell ''Paikuhan'' the Funimation way, but now I love the original spelling of it.

[coola]

Yes, for example, Kuririn hat he weared for journey to Namek, had written Kulilin, yet everyone call him Kuririn (And that`s how his name is speeled in Japanese too)

[DBZGTKOSDH]

We have seen his name written Kuririn in the manga too.

[VegettoEX]

In the case of Paikuhan, FUNimation's name for him has SOME basis in the original name, but it's clearly not a direct adaptation of it since it's missing an entire syllable in the middle and does nothing to preserve the pun. I'd classify that as "change" rather than "adaptation", and in that case, it can be completely ignored.

I totally get the "Toriyama wrote it this way" argument. I'm on board with that. Like I said, the problem is that such a spelling infers a particular pronunciation in "our language", and said pronunciation doesn't resemble the original a whole heck of a lot. It doesn't preserve the pronunciation, and it doesn't preserve the pun. What good is it, then? What if Toriyama wrote "Clearin" on Kuririn's hat, instead? How about "WELL COME"...?

You have to start calling into question Toriyama's grasp on the language he's playing with. What other spellings do we get? Bulma? Gokuh? Kulilin? I think that's it. It's not a great base to work from and start forming ideas about consistency and style.

We're essentially "stuck" no matter what we choose, so if you're going to go with something for a reason, at least you have a reason...!

[hleV]

Yes, for example, Kuririn hat he weared for journey to Namek, had written Kulilin, yet everyone call him Kuririn (And that`s how his name is speeled in Japanese too)
http://i45.tinypic.com/e6pwrp.jpg[/img]

But he wore a shirt that says "Kuririn" during the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, so we can choose! Same goes for Goku and Gokuh (and maybe Gokuu). Bulma hasn't been written as anything else in the manga I believe, except for "Bluma" in DBO, if you go with it (as it's based on the manga and perhaps stands for truth?). Also, Yajirove.

[samuraix123]

I died laughing VegettoEX when you said "Clearin"

Edit - I've also seen people spell Goku's name ''Gokua'' and I don't really like that because it makes me think of this guy

[Ryuman]

I've recently submitted to the all-mighty Blooma. My only regret is that people might not understand me, but I'd just explain it to them anyway.

[Gyt Kaliba]

That's why I've basically gone with what seem to be the most accepted spellings and names based on the various sources I've encountered. As soon as I realized 'Well Come' was actually a thing (I'd been told way before that it was some kind of stupid joke of Hell Come, I think), I realized that I couldn't exactly trust Toriyama's use of English. So I pretty much just ignore 'Gokuh'.

As far as P-ikkon goes, it is a bit of a name change, but one that's similar enough to the original name that I'm fine with it. Just personally, I mean - I'm not gonna fight for it's usage or anything, but it's never bothered me either.

Ack, I didn't realize the dub name for Paikuhan was filtered as well. I had no idea it was as beviled as Fr-i-eza.

[JeffJarrett]

It's Bulma, Toriyama decided to spell the name of this character he created that way. Fans don't have spell names Toriyama created with spellings other than what he chose.

[Herms]

You have to start calling into question Toriyama's grasp on the language he's playing with. What other spellings do we get? Bulma? Gokuh? Kulilin? I think that's it. It's not a great base to work from and start forming ideas about consistency and style.

It's not a language he's playing with though, it's an alphabet. Writing "Bulma" on a shirt isn't English any more than writing the lyrics to Chala Head Cha-La in Romaji is. Toriyama's alphabet spellings of character names are all perfectly valid. He never writes "Gtku" or "Zuririn", or anything else that's actually incorrect. Rather, they're merely spellings that sometimes seem strange to us because they're different from what we're used to, or don't conform with our ideals for how much a spelling should match the name pun. And English speakers might mispronounce them, but these spellings weren't intended for an English audience, but for a Japanese one that he could assume was familiar with alphabet. It's one thing to say that these spellings aren't optimal for our purposes as English-speaking fans, but to say that therefore they're wrong is overreaching it.

At any rate, English speakers may mispronounce "Bulma" (in the sense that they pronounce it differently than the name's pronounced in Japanese), but that's also true of "Ryu", "Naruto", and of course "Saiyan". Blame it on the vagueness of English phonetics, but I doubt there's any spelling fully immune to this. I suspect more than a few people's first instinct would be to prounce "Blooma" as "Blow ma"

[samuraix123]

Herms I like the point you brought up about Ryu. Because a long while back, I always called Ryu ''R ''I'' U'' sorry I have a little trouble explaining stuff but I think most people know where I'm coming from. also how many letters are in the Japanese alphabet? or could I be missing something.