Category talk:English surnames from Japanese
(Note to admins: Please archive this discussion to Category talk:English surnames from Japanese after the issue is resolved)
I cannot find a better place to put this, but I doubt the existence of basically all names (mostly surnames) added by Special:Contributions/24.105.160.0/19 and Special:Contributions/68.191.0.0/16, both for English and Non-English (Portuguese, French, German, Italian, etc.), since it seems that many of the names are those of fictional characters (or of Japanese emperors, etc.) and their use in the languages they are claimed to be used in is doubtful. There are simply too many to list on here. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 09:04, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
- If a large proportion of the names turns out to be unverifiable, I'm not wholly opposed to the idea of just deleting all of those entries, even if that may seem like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It is also worth noting that this is possibly the same editor that was adding nonsense Egyptian entries earlier. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 09:07, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
- @Eirikr What is your opinion on entries such as Fubuki, Masahito,Yoshihito, etc? These seem to be romanizations, rather than actual borrowings into English, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. On the other hand, there are entries such as Shinzo, Nijo, Ichijo, Shinjo that have lost the "ō". Are these considered actual borrowings? KevinUp (talk) 09:41, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
- Meh. Unless we've got verifiable examples of English speakers are using these names for their own children, I'm more of the opinion that these are romanizations -- and the dropping of the macron is not evidence of borrowing, in my view, so much as evidence of English writers and readers not understanding diacritics, or simply not bothering with them. We see the same thing with other languages, like Hawaiian humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa appearing in English contexts as humuhumunukunukuapuaa, losing both the macron and the ʻokina.
- Otherwise, we may as well just romanize every name everywhere that isn't already spelled in Latin letters and dump all of that into Wiktionary as "English". Which seems to be what this anon is doing for Japanese names. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 16:55, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
- I've cleaned up and removed English, Cebuano, Spanish, Tagalog, Portuguese, etc from the following entries:
- @Eirikr These entries also need to be deleted:
- I found similar entries created by Special:Contributions/130.254.82.135 and Special:Contributions/73.182.28.179 in 2016 so I will clean those up later. KevinUp (talk) 00:50, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
- @Surjection: you're right that the names in the boxes are lists of personal names of emperors, but also first names of Madoka characters (I don't remember a real person named Kyūbei as in the familiar in Madoka), the dropped-macron names as mentioned before, and possibly IJN battleship names (edited 吹雪 long time ago).
- Isn't the romanization of 久兵衛 written as Kyūbee or Kyūbē? I would like an analysis regarding the sound shift from べいゑ → べえ... ～ POKéTalker（═◉═） 10:05, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
- Kyūbee appears to be legit. I'm glad you've restored the romanization entry. KevinUp (talk) 06:40, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
Update: After analyzing entries created by various IPs, I've identified the following 540 entries with Japanese romanizations assigned as English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Tagalog lemmas. If any of these lemmas are indeed used for names of native speakers, then citations or statistical evidence will be needed. KevinUp (talk) 06:40, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
Also, these entries need to be deleted due to incorrect romanization (using "o" instead of "ō", etc):
Cleanup is in progress. Please archive this discussion to Category talk:English surnames from Japanese once the issue is resolved. KevinUp (talk) 06:40, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
- I've added RFV tags to all entries on the "small list". Note to anyone adding cites that we specifically need examples of these being used in English texts and not as romanizations (or botched romanizations) of names. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 07:26, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
I think a very small number of these ought to have English entries as generally known historical figures, though not as "given names": in particular Hirohito and perhaps Akihito since they're in wide and unambiguous use in English to refer to specific people on the same principle as e.g. Cicero or Napoleon sense 1. —Nizolan (talk) 13:41, 11 May 2020 (UTC)