This thread is a suggestion about Consistency in order of first name and last name of characters and voice actors' names of Artist field in Romanisation.

[Attention]
The proposal in this sub-forum is a suggestion for how to list animated characters and their voice actors in the artist field in romanized form, and does not address how to list multiple artists in the artist field in romanized form.
When multiple artists are listed in the artist field in romanized form, the order of the first and last names seems to be basically unified, but I suggest that the romanization of animated characters and their voice actors inevitably have separate sources, and that the order of the first and last names may differ.

As I point out below, I question the different order of the first and last names of the character and voice actor names in the romanization of the artist's name.
beatmapsets/2101000/discussion/-/generalAll#/4524665/12045713

Do you know about the composition of Japanese names?
Generally, Japanese people's real names, including mine, are in the order of Last name -> First Name (e.g. Minase (Last Name) Inori (First Name)).
However, some artists may prefer the order First Name -> Last Name (e.g. Nana (First Name) Takahashi (Last Name)).
Thus, there are two different ways of writing Japanese names.

This may vary depending on the voice actor's agency, and in the agency to which 内田真礼 (Uchida Maaya) and others belong, the order is Last Name -> First Name.
https://www.imenterprise.jp/profile_list.php


On the other hand, in the office to which Ruriko Aoki belongs, which will be discussed later, the order is First Name -> Last Name.
https://www.atomicmonkey.jp/talent

Many Japanese, including myself, have never cared deeply about the order of family names in English names, and there is a lot of notational shaking.
Some people use First Name -> Last Name to conform to foreign cultures since it is written in English, while others use Last Name -> First Name since the order is Last Name -> First Name for Japanese people.

I looked up the origin of why the order of Japanese names is reversed when they are written in English, but could find no detailed information.
The Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs recommends the order Last Name -> First Name, but this is not closely related to this proposal and shall be omitted.
(If you are interested in this see here: https://www.bunka.go.jp/kokugo_nihongo/sisaku/joho/joho/kakuki/22/tosin04/17.html)

It's good to have two different notation methods, but I think that mixing different order of notation methods for something that requires more than one name, such as an animated song, can be time consuming and uncomfortable to understand from some players' point of view.

To explain this in detail, I will use my favorite character 多田李衣菜 (Tada Riina) and voice actor 青木瑠璃子 (Aoki Ruriko) as an example.

References:
https://music.amazon.co.jp/artists/B0BY8R7B31/miku-maekawa-cv-natsumi-takamori-riina-tada-cv-ruriko-aoki etc...

https://twitter.com/coloruri/
https://www.atomicmonkey.jp/talent/aokiruriko


For example, Tada Riina (CV: Aoki Ruriko) is not incongruous because the order of the first and last names is not different in the two names.
But, Riina Tada (CV: Aoki Ruriko) is different for the order of the first and last names, so players who are not familiar with common Japanese names may misinterpret the first and last names.

At this time there are no rules regarding these in the RC, so it is possible to rank maps even if the order of the first and last names of the characters and their voice actors is different.

Therefore, I propose to add the rules written by Net0 to the RC.


For example,
O Riina Tada (CV: Ruriko Aoki) -> Both are in the notation First Name -> Last Name.
O Tada Riina (CV: Aoki Ruriko) -> Both are in the notation Last Name -> First Name.
X Riina Tada (CV: Aoki Ruriko) -> RC violation due to different notation in the two names.

This can reduce the shaky and uncomfortable notation of artist names and prevent inconsistencies in interpretation by each player.
I'm confident that this rule will be beneficial to many, as it will clarify the previously unclear method of writing the names of Japanese and other artists.

If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions for improvement regarding this proposal, please feel free to let me know.

(This proposal is written using the translation tool at DeepL, so I apologize for any errors in English.)

I do agree with Eriha. Character name and seiyuu name order being inconsistent is literally so dumb, please hope the ranking committee or whatever the rule makers are called to really consider this.

Agree with Eriha. This standardization would be very beneficial.

but what if this involves multiple character and multiple seiyuu, such as Inori Minase?

we could end up like
LF (CV: LF), LF (CV: LF), LF (CV: Inori Minase)

example: beatmapsets/1619893

do we reverse everyone else name to stay consistent with Inori Minase? do we change it to Minase Inori to be consistent with everyone else?

can we not just always enforce the japanese order (LF) to both char name (assume char name is japanese) and cv name?
instead of having to deal with mapper intention + artist intention... huge inconsistency

ur proposal is 1 step forward but its still not completely solve all the inconsistency from multiple official sources + we have to respect artist intention

i still dont understand why we have so much focus on artist intention for metadata when a lot people clearly ignore composer intention of not having their song being mapped in osu.

@Drum-Hitnormal Thanks for your opinion.
Certainly, it is debatable which order to respect.
For example, a search for "分島花音" (Wakeshima Kanon) seems to produce two different orders of artist names: Wakeshima Kanon and Kanon Wakeshima.



I believe that the rules need to be further deepened and clarified to take into account the names of two or more artists and voice actors when there are so many shaky notations in just one artist's name.

However, until today, we have not clarified the order because of the metadata RC:


This rule makes it impossible to properly standardize the order of the first and last names of artists (due to the fact that there are shaky notations on each site), which also leads to this problem.

To answer your question in my opinion, if the artist's name is split into two different ways of writing it, we believe that it is necessary to establish rules and guidelines (if artist name is Mizuki Nana, Minase Inori, Yukari Tamura -> change to Tamura Yukari, since only first -> last etc...), such as prioritizing the most common way of writing artist names, or newly establishing a preference for the romanization of Japanese and other artist names as the reading of the language in which they are written (If the artist's name is “分島花音”, it should be “Wakeshima Kanon” as it is read in Japanese).

If a similar rule is established, it must be added that artists who prefer to use first -> last notation, such as “Nana Takahashi”, must be respected.

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

example: beatmapsets/1619893

I missed this link, but the artist notations on this map are very odd...
If the order of the first and last names is different in these two names, players with no knowledge of the artist will not be able to correctly understand the Japanese name.

beatmapsets/1619893/discussion/-/generalAll#/2791408/7601645
It seems that Garden mentioned it a little a few years ago.

artist 1 wants order 1, artist 2 wants order 2
u put both artist in same song, now its messed up for the player...

i think is best to just have consistency and ignore artist intention

my suggestion is to always Romanize it in the same order as original language (Last to First for japanese/korean/chinese).

unless their english name is something very different than romanized with different order

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

my suggestion is to always Romanize it in the same order as original language (Last to First for japanese/korean/chinese).

unless their english name is something very different than romanized with different order

yeah I believe this is the best strategy if possible!

If the order is mixed up in one field, it is definitely inconvenient to understand, so I think it would be nice to have a rule to standardize it.
In this case, the important issue is which order to follow when romanizing artists.
The reason for romanizing artists is not just to write roman(latin) script (means how to read),
If the purpose is to make it easier for non-Japanese people(especially for western) to understand the composition of the Japanese artist's name, I think it is reasonable to write it in the order of Given (first) name - Family (last) name.
Instead, in this case, we should ignore the intention of the artist who uses Family name as first.
In fact, both ways are fine for me, so I don't care what way be chosen.

+1 to the opening post, it has always been a gray zone even though I'm lowkey pushing it (consistent character + cv name order) myself (e.g. beatmapsets/2088600/discussion/-/generalAll#/4241838), would be good to have it clearly defined

regarding dh's question I agree that they'd better be consistent too, and following unicode order preferably in case of conflicts would be the better option (like suggested)

I genuinely thought this was a thing already, I always went by making both orders consistent as a way I considered common sense, +1.

Seems okay +1

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

i think is best to just have consistency and ignore artist intention

heavily disagree with this, there are plenty of instances where a name is much more known worldwide by a reversed order (e.g. Koji Kondo) and making this confusing in the interest of consistency between ranked sets provides no tangible benefit to the player

the current romanization rules which mandate consistent orders if no official romanization is available but allow a reasonable interpretation otherwise is how it should stay imo

Purplegaze wrote:

heavily disagree with this, there are plenty of instances where a name is much more known worldwide by a reversed order (e.g. Koji Kondo) and making this confusing in the interest of consistency between ranked sets provides no tangible benefit to the player

As I mentioned, there are some artists, such as Nana Takahashi, who prefer to use that notation, but there are not many patterns of common voice actors who are particular about their notation.

Since the purpose of this proposal is only to unify the order of the character's name and its voice actor's last name, which notation should be given priority must be considered.

In my opinion, add the aforementioned rule and I would like to give preference to the order of the first and last names of the character names. (Unless the voice actor is particular about the order.)
Although it is the voice actors who sing the animation songs, isn't it important to prioritize the fact that these characters are singing the songs when we think of them as animation?

Many of the official websites for recent anime have a pattern of listing the characters' names in English, and it would be good to establish a guideline of using the English names of the voice actors if there are none.

btw in setting up such a rule, my English could be a bit rustic...

Even tho I wrote that proposal rule, I stil think it could lead to big discussions when you consider this rule;


For example, in case the official romanisation for the character is available and it is first name/last name but artist isn't official so it is last name/first name according to unicode order, how to handle those cases? Should we force the artist name to change or the character name?

Honestly, to me, the source of all of the issues is the fact that a lot of people still want to be official source depandant when we should be moving to a more standardisation direction. Just look at (TV Size) and how that fixed 99% of all the issues regarding that. To me, I'd just change the actual rule about romanising;


From that point, the character name would follow the same order as the artist one using the proposed rule.


And yeah, I know, people here will disagree because of artist intention or something like that, but honestly, we're not an archive website, neither a fanclub, we're literally using their material without consent. So let's make things easier for everyone. But again, I might be just looking at things from a superficial level, so feel free to correct me in case I assumed something wrong in the discussion.

Bump. This is very important would hate to see this discussion dying out.

thank u~

Net0 wrote:

In cases where the artist field consists of Character (CV: Voice Actor) or Character (VO: Voice Actor) the romanisation order should be consistent in both Character and Voice Actors first and last name order.

Yeah, Adding this rule would certainly further increase the accuracy of the metadata.
If more nats agree with this opinion, it won't be long before it is implemented.

+1, I don't really have any objections. If anything I've always been a proponent of having the same name format be consistent between character name and voice actors/seiyuus.

However, there are some cases where the character name is intentionally formatted differently: for example, some of the "foreign" characters in Love Live!, such as Mia Taylor and Emma Verde, have the metadata formatted where the intention is to have the character name follow more western conventions. This would bring it into conflict with the other group members, which follow the more typical eastern format of last name first name, like Yuki Setsuna or Osaka Shizuku. It would kind of be a mess if characters and voice actors/seiyuus from the same franchise end up having different metadata formats.

Because of the possibility where the format is intentionally different, I think it would actually be best if this was a guideline rather than a rule.

p.s: i probably could've articulated my words better but hopefully my message still comes across. if not i can try and elaborate what i mean

Can we push this? Everyone is in favor, not sure what's missing here.

it's missing a PR =)

seems good to me as well but should be a guideline for the rare possible exceptions other ppl mentioned