The bulk update request #2103 is active.

remove alias simon_belmont -> simon_belmondo
remove alias trevor_c_belmont -> ralph_c_belmondo
remove alias sonia_belmont -> sonia_belmondo
remove alias richter_belmont -> richter_belmondo
remove alias julius_belmont -> julius_belmondo

Reason: Bringing some names in line with the rest of the Belmonts. Official romanization has always been "Belmont" ever since the first Castlevania games.

EDIT: The bulk update request #2103 (forum #159554) has been approved by @Hillside_Moose.

Should there not also be a mass update to accompany this?

Elfaleon said:

Should there not also be a mass update to accompany this?

My intent had been to reverse the alias. Can't do that properly until the unalias request goes through.

Elfaleon said:

Should there not also be a mass update to accompany this?

Since the current aliases and tags have been around for several years, in this case I believe it'd better to reverse it with an alias.

Konami is known for rather strange renames in US. Last syllable is unmistakable "DO" in kana in Japanese and AFAIR, rules say "tag by Japanese name".

rowaasr13 said:

Konami is known for rather strange renames in US. Last syllable is unmistakable "DO" in kana in Japanese and AFAIR, rules say "tag by Japanese name".

It's more on a case-by-case basis. Some exceptions exist: dragalia lost, fire emblem, and pokemon_(creature) all use english tags. Pretty sure there are more.

Since "Belmont" is used more than "Belmondo" in the west, and this isn't a japanese website, i would opt for that.

Official translation is Belmont. See Smash.
There's no reason to use a non-existing translation.

The bulk update request #2103 (forum #159554) has been approved by @Hillside_Moose.

Official translation is Belmont. See Smash.
There's no reason to use a non-existing translation.

I know Western people are generally absolutely sure that whatever is not Western is "non-existing", so here's "non-existing" *official* rendition of "Belmondo" for you:
https://auctions.c.yimg.jp/images.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/image/dr000/auc0508/users/e8565d49a965a38838e9f5f1a0f0d22640c20840/i-img1200x900-1566517958vffmmm53681.jpg
(from "Akumajou Dracula X Chronicles", Konami Official Books series, some more scans here: http://yahoo.aleado.com/lot?auctionID=c766981906)
There's also https://castlevaniadungeon.net/Images/Scans/DXC/chara_main01.jpg which is also from Chronicles, but I can't track its exact source. Maybe in-game profile?

It is "existing". It is also mentioned on English Wikipedia in character list and used in numerous "English-language" art, as quick search on google can easily confirm.

"Official translation" for Pokemon characters are Ash and Misty (and they're accurate translation of name's meaning too) and they "are used more in the west", but they're still Satoshi and Kasumi on danbooru. There IS a reason and it is "use a Japanese name" as stated in rules and not "official translation".

I don't know what the fuck "Smash" is, but if you want to go that route, then "official translation" for franchise name is "Castle Vania". With a space. See Konami Software Club monthly newsletter: https://web.archive.org/web/20190129122915/http://msx.hansotten.com/uploads/fyfiles/kscsjul88.pdf So, are we going to change tags now or what?

Can we stuff all those "see this Western source" and go back to adhering to Japanese originals? Can we please have one simple rule without stupid exceptions because "Oh, that's my favorite show and since I only know English and loud enough to demand changes on forum about that, everything about it must now be in English". I don't care about your "English" releases and don't want to guess for each franchise should I use original names or go look how exactly your translators mangled names for it. I want one simple rule.

In addition to that you're not simply swapped alias and main, you're completely removed "*belmondo" tags and that's just plain stupid. Why the hell I can't find character under his official name at all now?

rowaasr13 said:

I know Western people are generally absolutely sure that whatever is not Western is "non-existing", so here's "non-existing" *official* rendition of "Belmondo" for you:
https://auctions.c.yimg.jp/images.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/image/dr000/auc0508/users/e8565d49a965a38838e9f5f1a0f0d22640c20840/i-img1200x900-1566517958vffmmm53681.jpg
(from "Akumajou Dracula X Chronicles", Konami Official Books series, some more scans here: http://yahoo.aleado.com/lot?auctionID=c766981906)
There's also https://castlevaniadungeon.net/Images/Scans/DXC/chara_main01.jpg which is also from Chronicles, but I can't track its exact source. Maybe in-game profile?

Lacrimosa was wrong and these romanizations indeed existed. But it is also true that they are outdated and have been retconned (like Fire Emblem character romanizations).

I don't know what the fuck "Smash" is,

"Smash" refers to the Super Smash Bros. series, and also the latest appearance of Simon and Richter; although it being a spinoff, it had the approval by Konami.
But if we're going with old information, i'm going to post this snippet from the Castlevania wiki, from Simon Belmont's page:

At the end of the original Castlevania, the name listed in the credits under "The Hero" is Simon Belmondo, while in Simon's Quest it is consistently Simon Belmont.

This means that the "Belmondo" romanization has been retconned as far back as the second game, or 1987, one year after the first game came out. I find dumb to use a previous romanization that has been retconned since more than 30 years ago.

but if you want to go that route, then "official translation" for franchise name is "Castle Vania". With a space. See Konami Software Club monthly newsletter: https://web.archive.org/web/20190129122915/http://msx.hansotten.com/uploads/fyfiles/kscsjul88.pdf So, are we going to change tags now or what?

Again, outdated information (and maybe even mistyping). The official western name is "Castlevania", without space and with a lower-case V.

Can we stuff all those "see this Western source" and go back to adhering to Japanese originals?

I'm probably gonna bite my tongue after saying this, but Castlevania isn't the original japanese name! The original name is 悪魔城ドラキュラ (Akumajō Dorakyura, "Dracula's demoniac castle").

But of course nobody knows the series with that name. So "Castlevania" is a better option.
And since we're using the more well-known western name, for the sake of consistency we should also be using the official western romanizations.

In addition to that you're not simply swapped alias and main, you're completely removed "*belmondo" tags and that's just plain stupid. Why the hell I can't find character under his official name at all now?

See above. We didn't change his name, we just used a more up-to-date romanization. (Also the only thing changing is the ending t/do, so no matter what it should appear on auto-complete. But i guess you're not here for that.)

This means that the "Belmondo" romanization has been retconned as far back as the second game, or 1987, one year after the first game came out. I find dumb to use a previous romanization that has been retconned since more than 30 years ago.

Gentle hint: please look up release date for Akumajou Dracula X. No, it isn't "more than 30 years ago". PSP didn't exists back then. Also most recent game, "Lord of Shadow" still uses ベルモンド for character family name. You don't even need to know Japanese - only katakana half of kana to tell "to" from "do" - i.e. ト and ド. And how the hell you can "retcon" a romanization and change original name with that? If they'd retcon anything, they'd retcon original name to ベルモント. I feel like I fell 20 years ago in past to 90-ies and I'm back on web 1.0 Phantasy Star forums with some people lunging at everybody screaming that Noah and Lutz are two different characters (no, he's not) because first two games managed to mangle all names in different ways and "we don't give an eff about your weaboo originals".

Again, outdated information (and maybe even mistyping). The official western name is "Castlevania", without space and with a lower-case V.

This was only to demonstrate why EXACTLY using Japanese originals is better - because they don't switch around all the time. Especially with Konami who seems to love mangling translations differently in different languages.

I'm probably gonna bite my tongue after saying this, but Castlevania isn't the original japanese name! The original name is 悪魔城ドラキュラ (Akumajō Dorakyura, "Dracula's demoniac castle").

You don't say! Who could have guessed that with manual I've linked called "Akumajou Dracula X Chronicles" game itself is "Akumajou Dracula"!
Excuse me, couldn't resist. Also adjectives/descriptives go first in Japanese so it's "Dracula of Demonic Castle" or "Demon's Castle Dracula" or whatever way it sounds better in English for you as long as you get idea of Dracula, who resides in said Castle along. But right now I'm not talking about title.

But of course nobody knows the series with that name. So "Castlevania" is a better option.

Err... no? While 200k hits at google is of course lower than 27m, pretty much any half-serious fan of series knows this name.

And since we're using the more well-known western name, for the sake of consistency we should also be using the official western romanizations.

Yawn. Pokemon again. While all mosters are in English on danbooru, because explaining all the original puns would be kinda impossible, all trainer characters are listed with their original Japanese names.

See above. We didn't change his name, we just used a more up-to-date romanization.

Except it isn't "more up-to-date". It is simply "for different market".

Anyway, before going further and discussing what should be main name, my most important question right now is why *belmondo was completely removed instead of aliased?

And here you are: Judgement is THE LAST game in original series before LoS reboot and without remakes/rereleases. It says "Simon Belmondo" in easily readable Latin letters.

https://youtu.be/JL53m3fe9Cc?t=118

"Up-to-date" enough?

A gentle hint for you, rowaasr13, is to try and be civil on the forums. People tend to take you a lot more seriously when you aren't yelling at them.

rowaasr13 said:

Anyway, before going further and discussing what should be main name, my most important question right now is why *belmondo was completely removed instead of aliased?

I imagine there was no need for an alias because, for the small percentage of people who decide to search/tag using "x_belmondo", the autocomplete will show "x_belmont". As you yourself pointed out, the only difference between the names is the final letter(s) so there is little chance of someone missing the correct tag.

A gentle hint for you, rowaasr13, is to try and be civil on the forums. People tend to take you a lot more seriously when you aren't yelling at them.

If you refer to caps, then they're simpler way to empathize words than remembering tags of each particular forum. I'm not sure where you found any yelling otherwise.

I imagine there was no need for an alias because, for the small percentage of people who decide to search/tag using "x_belmondo", the autocomplete will show "x_belmont". As you yourself pointed out, the only difference between the names is the final letter(s) so there is little chance of someone missing the correct tag.

I don't see downside either for having extra aliases whatever way they will be defined. And since we have do have rule for using Japanese names, can we please just follow them? Also family name is not the only one market difference. For example "Trevor" is originally "Ralph" and Alucard mom's is "Risa". It's funny to look at post #668617 that clearly says "Ralph Belmondo" and see zero ralphs or belmondos in tags.

rowaasr13 said:

If you refer to caps, then they're simpler way to empathize words than remembering tags of each particular forum. I'm not sure where you found any yelling otherwise.

I don't see downside either for having extra aliases whatever way they will be defined. And since we have do have rule for using Japanese names, can we please just follow them? Also family name is not the only one market difference. For example "Trevor" is originally "Ralph" and Alucard mom's is "Risa".

There's no point creating an alias when the only difference between the two tags is the very last letter. Aliases exist to make it easier to search for something that may have multiple distinctly unique commonly used names. Typing simon_b into the search field will bring up simon_belmont regardless of whether or not you intended to type simon_belmondo. Demanding an alias in this case just for the sake of maintaining the existence of an unneeded tag that helps no one is unreasonable.

As for Trevor/Ralph, I wouldn't oppose it personally, but at the end of the day this is a western based site used primarily by English speakers, most of whom, especially after the Netflix series, are definitely going to come here looking for Trevor Belmont, not Ralph Belmondo, so I wouldn't worry about it either way.

Finally, is the 'prioritize Japanese names' "rule" actually a rule or is it more of a suggestion? Cause if it were explicitly a hard rule I don't think there would be so many English names on the site as it is. And frankly I hate the "rule", it doesn't seem like it actually makes searching easier in most cases, and a lot of the time just seems to be a constant cause for debate regarding which names to use. If aliases didn't exist, which haven't even been applied to everything that would benefit from them as it is, some things would be near impossible to find for the average user without doing extra research offsite because they're using the Japanese names that most westerner's probably haven't heard of even if they are big into Japanese media.

Handling things case by case would be a lot more productive than just defaulting everything to Japanese, in my opinion, and this is one of those cases where the Japanese names don't really help in any way.

Yes, there is.

Since I didn't care about LoS details too much before, I just found out that new Trevor is LoS reboot is literally Trevor (トレバー) in Japanese release, not Ralph (ラルフ) from original series. So they're completely different characters that this rename just mashed together.

"Always use original character names" rule was made exactly to stop this from happening.

most of whom, especially after the Netflix series, are definitely going to come here looking for Trevor Belmont, not Ralph Belmondo

Why exactly they should be treated any different that people who come looking for Ash Catchum? Or "Nessa" if you want more recent and girl example? There are aliases for that.

/wiki_pages/howto%3Acharacter explicitly says

Character tags should be the same name and name order that are used in the original source material. For example, Kiyama Hiroto, not "Hiroto Kiyama" or "Xavier Foster". If an alternate name, such as a nickname or a name from the English version, is widely used, you may "request an alias"/tag_alias_request/new from that to the original language title.

Why have rules if we not follow them? If we won't follow them - then just nuke them altogether.

It also mentions Pokemon and FE exceptions and explicitly says

This is not to be used as precedent for tagging other copyrights with localized names unless a similar degree of inconsistency exists.

There's zero inconsistency in original Japanese material - it always refers family name as "Belmondo" even when it uses Latin letters, so this does not apply.

Therefore it is definitely "belmondo" and "ralph_c_belmondo" for original, but seeing how "original" for LoS is Spanish studio and non-Japan releases came first it is "trevor_belmont" for LoS character. I'm not familiar enough with Netflix version to say about it.

The rule of only using original names has not been an absolute guideline for a while now. Especially in case of romanizations, we follow the current official spelling rather than make up our own.
It's clear that the japanese name is meant to represent a foreign-sounding name, it shouldn't be interpreted literally, otherwise it wouldn't be written in katakana. And ド can mean many things. "-d", "-dt", and even "-t" depending on the syllabe that preceeds it (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku).
That character's official spelling is "Belmont" in all recent media tied to the franchise. I don't see how hard it is to understand this. Even your example, Lord of Shadow, uses "Belmont" in the english localization.
Or should we start tagging Dracula as "Dorakyura"?

The rule of only using original names has not been an absolute guideline for a while now.

Update help then. As of now I see nothing about that in there.

we follow the current official spelling rather than make up our own.

Official spelling with Latin letters in Japanese market is "Belmondo". See trailer from Judgement I've linked above. And then people ask why I use caps... Because nobody actually reads important parts otherwise. Wait, I'll link it again just in case: https://youtu.be/JL53m3fe9Cc?t=118

It's clear that the japanese name is meant to represent a foreign-sounding name, it shouldn't be interpreted literally, otherwise it wouldn't be written in katakana.

I don't even know where to start on how just wrong it is in every word. Pretty much every language that uses non-Latin script writes foreign names in its own script 95% of a time to show readers how it should be read.

And ド can mean many things. "-d", "-dt", and even "-t" depending on the syllabe that preceeds it (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku).

You're not actually know or learning Japanese, do you? Otherwise you wouldn't link rendaku, as it description explicitly says in first paragraph it is a "the voicing of the initial consonant of the non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word". Note: a compound or prefixed word. "Belmondo" is a single non-compound, non-prefixed word and "do" is not an "initial consonant". "Initial" means "at the start", not "at the end". This have nothing to do with rendaku at all which only kicks in when you string several roots together. And no ド can't mean plain "t" unless translation department fucked up and invented their own romanization instead of what author had in mind. Japanese kana is much more phonetical than most of Latin-based alphabets.

That character's official spelling is "Belmont" in all recent media tied to the franchise. I don't see how hard it is to understand this. Even your example, Lord of Shadow, uses "Belmont" in the english localization.

See video above again. Up to the very last game of initial series (yes, that's Judgement) it uses "Belmondo" in Latin in Japan. LoS is a European-made reboot with no connection to original series except being a spiritual successor. And it already have a character that explicitly have different name in Japan, as I mentioned above. LoS Trevor is Trevor in Japan, original series English Trevor is Ralph in Japan. Those are different characters now mixed together just because people CBA to follow rules and firmly believe that entire world revolves around English. Also according to same rules LoS characters should stay "belmont" - for them "original" names were written in non-Japanese studio. But I feel like broken record. I wrote all that already, did you even bother to read?

Or should we start tagging Dracula as "Dorakyura"?

No. We should research, get informed, not use unknown words and concepts without actually understanding them and stop building strawmen.

rowaasr13 said:

You're not actually know or learning Japanese, do you? Otherwise you wouldn't link rendaku, as it description explicitly says in first paragraph it is a "the voicing of the initial consonant of the non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word". Note: a compound or prefixed word. "Belmondo" is a single non-compound, non-prefixed word and "do" is not an "initial consonant". "Initial" means "at the start", not "at the end". This have nothing to do with rendaku at all which only kicks in when you string several roots together.

Are you copypasting from wikipedia now? It's a made-up english sounding name, it doesn't follow normal rules for kanji constructs. For all we know what the original guy who came up with it meant is "Belmondth". There's infinite equally valid translations of the katakana into romaji. What we follow instead of delving into that nonsense is the primary localization of the name, because it's common sense and because it makes it consistent with the rest of the internet.
All recent media have that family name localized as "Belmont". They presumably had Konami's blessing in this, given that it's a central name to the Castlevania franchise. Bring it up with them if you disagree with it, not with us.

And compare the following google searches:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22belmond%22+%22castlevania%22

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22belmont%22+%22castlevania%22

Using a tag like "Belmondo" would be like using "Hitokage" for Charmander. It makes no sense. But if you can't see that then there's no point in arguing further.