Talk:Chica Umino

Problematic cut-and-paste move

Just a heads up that there was a cut-and-paste move done on this article from Chica Umino to Chika Umino. She goes by "羽海野チカ", and "Umino Chica" in her works and on her official homepage [1]. There appears to be 3 problems with this "move": 1, it was cut-and-pasted, 2, there were revert wars, and 3, there was no consensus, or even a discussion in the talk page. As such, I am undoing the move and the move should not go ahead per Wikipedia policies until these issues have been resolved. —Tokek (talk) 15:52, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, she's also referred to as "Chika" in her website, near the bottom. I'd say that warrants a matter of discussion, since she has referred to herself as "Chika" as well on her website, and almost all sources refer to her as "Chika" as well. ···巌流^{? · talk to ganryuu} 20:03, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Almost all is a rather vague measurement. "羽海野チカ" is the most official title she goes by, and when the artist herself romanizes her pen name, it is consistently (AFAIK) spelled "Umino Chica" in her works. In the end, I'm not saying it should definitely be one article title over the other, however the cut-and-paste move caused problems where there were two edit histories for what is essentially one article. The number of edits at Chika Umino was still very few compared to the older one, so I've resurrected the article prior to the problematic move, and merged the contributions. Sometimes in such circumstances the edit histories will be merged by an admin, and a page that only redirects may be deleted to make way for a proper move, again by a user with admin privileges. The move process needs to be handled more slowly, as it needs more time. Not discussing it, not using the move feature of Wikipedia and cut-n-pasting it instead, etc. unnecessarily caused additional unresolved problems.

There are many factors that complicate the article title issue in this case, as is the case with many other Japanese artists:

1. The Japanese usually do not do a good job of consistently sticking with one spelling or one casing when it comes to romanization. Even less so by third parties.
2. It's a made up alias, not a real name. Is there really a first name and last name part to it? Should we apply the same, exact rules to fictional aliases as we do to real names? It's somewhat ironic to ultimately sensor an artist's choice of expression.
3. If we assume first name and last name parts to the alias, the artist's preferred romanization of her pen name, Umino Chica, goes against the Japanese practice of swapping true name order.
4. Choice of romanization. While a large amount of Japan-related topics on Wikipedia make extensive use of Hepburn, few exceptions are made in order to better reconcile with reality. While there is a place for hepburn, there isn't a romanization standard for Japanese names in practice.
5. By official rules, Japanese passports do not allow hepburn-style macrons to indicate long vowels.
6. The de facto standard in business, media, and academics is that there is no set of rules to automatically romanize a person's name. Instead, an individual is given the flexibility of spelling one's name however one pleases. This form of spelling may or may not be replicated by others.

Given these circumstances, I don't believe there is one right answer. That's why I'm not going to insist on only one out of a set of reasonable choices. My primary objective was to point out that there was a cut-n-paste move done that may need fixing.

BTW, her pen name has meaning when name order is preserved. Example of such names include:

• Umino Chica → "umi no chikaku" → near the sea
• Suga Shikao → "sugashii kao" → refreshing face
• Morinaga Milk → "Morinaga Milk Industry"

This wouldn't be a problem if Japan didn't practice name order swapping. :-/ —Tokek (talk) 19:08, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

The artist uses "Chika" on her website as well, so we could therefore assume that she uses "Chika" regularly too, and especially since it's far more common in English usage (with sources such as Anime News Network referring to her as Chika Umino in all their news articles), the article would therefore be best suited at "Chika Umino". In regards to naming patterns, refer to WP:MOS-JA for a thorough explanation. About the cut and paste move, see Wikipedia:How to fix cut-and-paste moves. ···巌流^{? · talk to ganryuu} 18:13, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

If it's an official page, as opposed to a personal blog, it's likely not made by herself. See #1. In her own works, she consistently uses one spelling. "far more common" still sounds subjective. —Tokek (talk) 14:50, 27 April 2009 (UTC)