Danbooru

Tag discussion: horo vs. holo

Posted under General

The simple fact is that she ... has a name that can pretty reasonably be tied to the Ainu word for "wolf".

The thing is that I don't find it reasonable since it's an abbreviation at best, and since there's more support for calling her "Hor," "Hol," or even "Hod" than "Horo" under that logic.

Note that the word is ホㇿケゥ, not ホロケウ. The distinction is important because the little ㇿ represents a final alveolar flap following an "o" when transcribing Ainu (that is, there's no "o" sound following it).

As for the setting being western or European, that's true in a sense, but despite the appearance of a pre-capitalist western setting, there is no effort to actually label it European or link it to any real world region.

Admittedly, it doesn't take place in the real historical Europe, but there's even less justification in considering it a Japanese setting with Hokkaido to the north since it lacks any Japanese cultural cues.

Given everything else about the setting, I think it's far more reasonable to consider it a European loan word than an Ainu one and to simply trust the way it was written in visual sources rather than to second guess everyone who actually worked with the author to support some mismashed European + Ainu setting theory.

Buford said:
That sounds like the most logical solution that would make both spelling camps happy.

Not at this point. Especially if it's based on this cockamamie Ainu language theory.

BCI_Temp said:
Note that the word is ホㇿケゥ, not ホロケウ. The distinction is important because the little ㇿ represents a final alveolar flap following an "o" when transcribing Ainu (that is, there's no "o" sound following it).

The Shaman King character "Horohoro", ホロホロ (Real Name Usui Horokeu, 碓氷ホロケウ), who is part of the Ainu and was called a wolf in the series, already set a precedent here.

BCI_Temp said:
Admittedly, it doesn't take place in the real historical Europe, but there's even less justification in considering it a Japanese setting with Hokkaido to the north since it lacks any Japanese cultural cues.

Imagine Europe and replace the Scandinavian peninsula with Hokkaido. The name "Yoitsu" sounds pretty Japanese to me as opposed to the other town names (Ruvinheigen, Pazzio, Pasloe).

I'm not sure why people are still bothering with this. For whatever reasons, the majority of users and staff members prefer Horo, and so does jxh.

That doesn't leave much to be discussed really, unless some kind of overwhelming evidence in favor of Holo shows up, which it won't.

Fred1515 said:
That doesn't leave much to be discussed really, unless some kind of overwhelming evidence in favor of Holo shows up, which it won't.

How do three different official sources not qualify as "overwhelming evidence"?

jjj14 said:
How do three different official sources not qualify as "overwhelming evidence"?

They don't qualify because Danbooru doesn't care about official sources. Hazuki said it in the previous discussion too, which apparently nobody bothered reading:

葉月 said:
DANBOORU DOES NOT HAVE ANY AFFINITY TO OFFICIAL NAMES. We usually adopt them for made-up western-sounding names, because there's nothing better to go with. But for official names that are clearly non-western (or clearly retarded), we're more than happy to drop them and adopt sane versions instead. With Horo there's absolutely nothing to suggest it's inherently a western name, and Holo sounds idiotic, so I'm strongly against.

So unless it can be proven that she was named after a deity or person or whatever whose name is always written with an "l" instead of a "r", official sources can do whatever the hell they want. Even if it is proven though, there's still the fact that most people, jxh included, simply prefer Horo and think that Holo sounds retarded. IMHO that alone carries enough weight to leave the name as it is.

Fred1515 said:
They don't qualify because Danbooru doesn't care about official sources.

From howto:romanize:
"For non-Japanese or outright made-up proper names, use their official spellings where possible."

Fred1515 said:
Hazuki said...

Meh.

Fred1515 said:
... most people at Danbooru simply prefer Horo and think that Holo sounds retarded.

Fixed. But wait!

D'Eye said:
Nobody cares for some John Doe's personal preferences.

P.S.: "Danbooru forums really do need the poll feature."

Updated

You do realize that the John Does you talk about happen to be the majority of Danbooru's active community and staff, right? You might not care about their personal preferences, but the fact is that they matter, and policy is created, followed or broken based on their personal preferences.

Anyways, I'll call it quits now before this goes further down the drain.

Fred1515 said:
You do realize that the John Does you talk about happen to be the majority of Danbooru's active community and staff, right?

Yes, I do. But I just don't understand why Danbooru prefers spelling with r, whereas the rest of the world prefers one with l.

Fred1515 said:
You might not care about their personal preferences, but the fact is that they matter, and policy is created, followed or broken based on their personal preferences.

Well, there is howto:romanize and this one Mod's post. Which of these sources should be considered more reliable?

Anyway, if Big Dan Heroes simply prefer Horo and think that Holo sounds retarded, then I guess it can't be helped.

Funimation is only allowed to use the romanization they are given for any particular name, even if it's blatantly wrong. This is part of their agreement with the original production companies. You can easily conclude that the user-editable sites are just following their site's policies stating that they use whatever the official distributor says.

You yourself stated this so I don't know why you're bringing it back up.

Well, as I said, it at least looks pretty official.

According to howto:romanize, Danbooru prefers official spelling; even if it's blatantly wrong.

Spelling with l is considered to be official (at least at Tokyo MX and among Western publishers).

Spelling with r is based on speculation only, and backed up by

S1eth said:
... this one guy who repeatedly claims to know the etymology of her name and his sources are terrible...

And let's not forget

NWF Renim said:
... Bulgarian folk dances http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horo_(dance).

But... Whatever.

If what Fencedude said is truth and every decision made at Danbooru is, indeed, solely based on staff's personal preferences, then I see no point in further discussion.

No offends, guys. Take it easy.

Updated

Fred1515 said:
I'm not sure why people are still bothering with this. For whatever reasons, the majority of users and staff members prefer Horo, and so does jxh.

Where do you get that? The majority of posters in this thread have supported Holo over Horo. 9 v. 4, with 5 ambiguous at the point you posted, by my count. Counting the other thread linked earlier, that only adds 4 more to the openly opposed camp. Still a majority in favor of going with the official sources.

That doesn't leave much to be discussed really, unless some kind of overwhelming evidence in favor of Holo shows up, which it won't.

Other than it appearing as Holo in the anime, produced by people who presumably had access to the author? How overwhelming does it have to be?

S1eth said:
The Shaman King character "Horohoro", ホロホロ (Real Name Usui Horokeu, 碓氷ホロケウ), who is part of the Ainu and was called a wolf in the series, already set a precedent here.

So? That's a completely different series taking place in Japan, and the character has a misspelled name. It's a stretch to say that the author of Spice & Wolf got the idea from there given how much other attention to detail and historical realism he put in his faux-European setting.

Imagine Europe and replace the Scandinavian peninsula with Hokkaido. The name "Yoitsu" sounds pretty Japanese to me as opposed to the other town names (Ruvinheigen, Pazzio, Pasloe).

True, however, Yoitsu is still written in katakana, unlike "the wise wolf" in her epithet of "ヨイツの賢狼." It's another loan word. Before you go there, yes that is a possible combination of sounds in the Ainu language, but I can't find any word it would correspond to in any online dictionaries, so I still think that's a huge stretch.

The whole Horkew = Holo theory just has too many points of failure. It requires that:

1. The anime people just made up a non-traditional romanization of ホロ without consulting the author.
2. The author intended to use an Ainu name or character in a Western setting with no other Japanese influences. (Sub point: The author knows and is aware of the word "Horkew.")
3. The author deliberately butchered said name despite picking reasonable names for the rest of his characters, possibly as a reference to Shaman King.

Any of these are possible, but all together they seem quite improbable -- tenuous and fragile as a conspiracy theory.

That and "Yoitsu" is just transliteration based on Japanese pronunciation as well. "Yoitz" is a European surname. I know that it is a place and not a person in the series, but there are plenty of places named after people.

D'Eye said:
Well, as I said, it at least looks pretty official.

According to howto:romanize, Danbooru prefers official spelling; even if it's blatantly wrong.

Well that is fairly cut and dry assuming everyone agrees it is unquestionably a non Japanese name and that the source is "official".

As far as I can tell, the "Horo" name became popular as it was the default romanization used by fansubbers (Wouldn't be a stretch to say that >99% of the western fanbase saw the anime without reading the light novels). I'm sure someone digging through the light novels would stumble upon roman letters corresponding to the author's intended spelling eventually.

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