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Talk:Mike Goutokuji

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About "Mike"

Although this is exactly how ZUN spelled it, "Mike" is way too common as an English male name which has already caused confusion from people who had little Japanese knowledge. In a case like this, should we take the liberty to use accented 'é' similar to "saké"? - —Preceding unsigned comment added by DracoGideon (talkcontribs) 04:10, 21 March 2021‎ (UTC)

This wiki always takes kana romanization at face value. Nue and Sanae don't have it. And there was a whole editing war over 女苑 (Jo'on vs. Joon) that ended up not keeping the apostrophe. Same thing happened with any spellings of レイセン other than "Reisen". 魔理沙, although looking like an English name, is pronounced "Mah-ri-sa" rather than "Muh-ri-sa" but the wiki still keeps "Marisa" instead of changing the romanization so that English speakers can intuitively pronounce it.
I guess the real question here is if it matters. Does it either way? Way too many people say "Sanay" and "New" and "Muhrisa" already. Your suggestion ignores that the ミ in ミケ is pronounced "mee", whereas the Mi in Mike is pronounced "mai". Shouldn't it then be "Míké"? I wouldn't be opposed to a non-standard romanization but honestly using accent marks makes it look like her name is European or something and opens up a whole seperate conversation about romanization in general.
Ennin (talk) 10:50, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
The names are spelled in IPA right below to give an idea of how to pronounce them anyway, so using a non-standard romanization for that purpose is kinda redundant. Of course, not many know it but if we need to make the pronunciation clear, those spellings are already there for that reason.
GMEStanley (talk) 00:29, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
The issue isn't about the pronunciation or people making jokes, as Rex had suggested later on - it's the realization that ZUN did not create a character based around the English Mike. For us it's trivial to tell, but for others it may not be that simple. When people search for the character, en.wiki is almost always the first or second result, and they aren't necessarily checking the full contexts. We can always blame people for being "lazy" but don't you think that the presentation could've been better with other approaches?
I've got a case where a character was named 目目(めめ), a youkai made of eyeballs, which obviously will transliterate into "meme." The dev was Japanese and they changed it to "mémé" so players will come to the realization that it's not meant to be "meme" in English. Of course, they still made jokes about it, but when they cut out the character's name from the game, those accented é remained and it's enough to clarify that it's only a joke not the actual name.
Another reversed case is where a dev named themselves "Fuse," while they meant English noun fuse, fellow devs and players couldn't tell whether it's Japanese ふせ or フューズ in English and the dev had to explain everywhere they were mentioned. Til now we don't have a good solution other than renaming.
I guess for us this "Mike" be another instance where we just have to "live with it."
--DracoGideon (talk) 18:17, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Please, for the love of all that is holy, do not do this. People are going to joke about it no matter what you do, and that's all it ever could be: a joke. People who don't know Japanese? Sucks for them, they'll figure it out eventually. That's how it is with everything else relating to language. Trying to "correct" the romanization, as if the creator made some grievous error, is always the wrong way to go about this, every single time, in every single situation. I feel so bad for people like Takashi Miike...

Never "fix" official romanizations. Never "correct" official terms. You are not ever "fixing" or "correcting" anything when you do that. This is an ironclad rule with such a tiny amount of exceptions (honest to goodness typos that the creator usually mentions somewhere, the same term being written differently in different places, etc) that they aren't even worth talking about. Even the Eva community uses "Children" almost to a fault. I have never understood why the Touhou community is unwilling to show this very basic respect. Despatche (talk) 23:50, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Even yourself suggested that there are exceptions to your own "ironclad rules." Then what's there to stop this from being another one? ZUN wrote "goast" in WBaWC then we have to write "goast" everywhere to "respect" him? He's never mentioned anywhere that he made a typo there. If there's one person who gets to say what's disrespectful to the genre, it's ZUN, not you.
--DracoGideon (talk) 18:17, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
These two examples have absolutely nothing to do with each other. "goast" is presumably a typo (and the fact that it was written this way should be noted, and people editing the images should leave it alone), while "Mike" is not a typo at all and is the most straightforward way of romanizing "ミケ" that is physically possible. Despatche (talk) 02:33, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
I still think that some kind of distinction or clarification somewhere outside the IPA is warrented. The other names that are commonly misread (including Joon) are still distinctly non-western and aren't written the same as an existing common name, but Mike is not. My worry about it is by not clarifying it, we'll end up in a situation like with Flandre's, Cirno's and Maribel's names, where the chosen romanisation is very misleading towards the pronunciation of them, and has permanently altered what the community call them. Using an accent probably isn't the best idea, but maybe using an apostrophe would be? It's purpose in romanisation is to clarify after all.
Despatche, this doesn't have anything to do with "fixing" romanisation, it's to do with clarification. Please don't warp this into something it's not.
--Wolfdragon Rex 02:31, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
But that's exactly what romanization (specifically transliteration) is. I am not "warping" anything into anything else here. "Joon" and "Mike" are fundamentally different from those other cases, and should be treated accordingly. Even then, we should still be using what's official whenever possible, and guess what the official transliteration of the ice fairy's name is? I'm not happy either! The real discussion is over things like "Hujinroku", but that is a discussion this community is seemingly unwilling to have. Despatche Despatche (talk) 02:33, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
For the record, "Cirno", "Flandre" and "Maribel" were decided to be left alone solely to keep status quo and not confuse people. I myself disagree with that reasoning but there's regrettably not much support here for changing them. The first two names are ZUN's official romanizations and are, in my opinion, obvious errors on his part (it really should be "Chillno" and "Flandoll"). Point is, all three of them are non-Japanese names that keep their faulty romanizations solely because of how ingrained they are in the Western fandom. ミケ really isn't comparable. If there were to be an alternate romanization then "Mi-ke" is the only viable option as far as I see it. Then again, if people really are that dull they'll just still see it as "Mike (Random Unexplained American Name™)" but seperated.
Ennin (talk) 3:58, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
I'm not opposed to using an apostrophe for the same reasons as Rex, but Mi-ke looks really awkward as a name.
GMEStanley (talk) 01:42, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
The trick is that so does "Mi'ke", and society has simply bludgeoned itself into accepting apostrophes. I'm still amazed people don't force the Pokemon example everywhere. (Please don't do that. Special characters are somehow even worse than needless punctuation.)
It's funny, see, we've got this thing called Deltarune now, yeah? And that game has a character who's name is written "Seam", but it's supposed to be pronounced "shawm" as a semi-pun on the name "Sean". And the community just... accepts this. Sure, "Mike" is by all rights a different case, but it's one where we have more of a reason to just leave things be. The point is that maybe what English speakers claim is "awkward" isn't really all that interesting, because they just beat themselves into accepting whatever they want anyway, regardless of logic. This kind of behavior is fickle and untrustworthy, and not at all something you want to base rules and guidelines on. Despatche (talk) 02:33, 24 October 2022 (UTC)