school bag -> satchel

school_bag -> satchel

Basically satchel covers the fact that it is carrying case used mostly be students who go to school.

There is also randoseru and backpacks under this school_bag tag and that just jumbles things up.

Is there really that much difference between the "satchel" carried by Japanese school students and a briefcase? That's how I always thought of those things.

yup, there is a difference. A briefcase is more business oriented, it is more sturdy and opens like a clam, it's always square, and some even have locks.

A satchel is seen as more school related, seen being carried by school/college students, and sometimes used for fashion. They open by a fold over flap, not like a clam. And as you see, it is more of bag then a case.

Satchels are also used by Mail Persons, with a name change to messenger bag, to get the point of the job across. Messenger bags are made from softer fabrics, and the strap given to go over the shoulder. They are used for fashion and for school.

Sorry, I'm going to have to disagree. There is no denotation I've ever seen that actually specifies a clamshell design (that's generally going to be more the domain of suitcases overall, I'd say) and I'm going to need to see more solid proof (people that agree with that definition) before I accept that all of ~satchel ~school_bag shouldn't just be aliased to briefcase. The common connotation that I've ever seen just doesn't match what you're saying.

I was talking about the way it opens, upward.

I never said it shouldn't be. I said they are different based on who carries them and the design of them. If you want to be specific.

They can all go to briefcase if that is what the admins want, I don't mind.

IMO if you call it a case, it has to open on a hinge.

Most of what I'm going to say is based of what I gleamed from wikipedia, online dictionaries, and google searches, so correct anything that is incorrect and you've been warned.

From what I've seen a major part of a satchel is the presences of a shoulder strap, which is generally something not present on the Japanese High School Bags (at least in depiction). The major defining characteristic of the briefcase is that it has a handle (and without a shoulder strap), and if you image google leather briefcase you'll come across plenty of images that look very similar to the high school bags. The high school bag would most likely be correctly labeled as a briefcase.

Since a briefcase does not have a shoulder strap, and the defining characteristic of a satchel is a shoulder strap; it would be incorrect to alias satchel to briefcase. This is regardless of how they're currently being used.

The purpose of the tags is to assist in accurately searching for images of a specific characteristic. So while the most commonly depicted school_bag is most likely a briefcase that does not mean that school_bag should be aliased to briefcase. If you only use a definition that the school_bag is strictly the type of bag used by Japanese Middle/High School students, it would be a disservice to alias it to briefcase. It would hinder people searching for images purely of school_bag type briefcases and would utterly drown out any images of non-school_bag type briefcases. So instead of making searches easier, it'd make them harder. Thus school_bag should not be aliased to briefcase (or satchel).

tl;dr: satchels are not briefcases, thus no alias. High school_bags follow the definition of a briefcase, so would be correctly tagged briefcase. Not all briefcases are school bags and merging the two would prevent finding non-school bag style briefcases, thus reject alias.

The school_bag tag should probably be expanded in definition and specific bag type tags should be applied in addition to the school_bag tag.

Touché. Well thought out and accurate; I think we have a winner though I'm still not sure school_bag has real worth as a tag (at what point does it stop being one?).

Just to clarify, my thought was that most of the current content of satchel and school_bag are briefcases, it looks like (I jumped the gun on aliasing, I guess). Backpacks and things with shoulder straps would, of course, need to be weeded out and, in my head at least, they would wind up in messenger_bag or something. "Satchel" is certainly not a word I see used frequently, so I thought it might be more useful that way to assist the fallible human memory. On the other hand, danbooru seems to be all about expanding people's vocabulary.

Urgh this always gets so complicated. Satchel is a word I almost never hear, and even then mostly in terms of explosives, heh. I too would be against school_bag -> briefcase. Even if they're very similar things (in Japan), I think people searching for them are looking for two rather different contexts. I'm also against school_bag -> satchel.

I guess my stance right now on various types of cases/bags is:
randoseru is clear
backpack is clear
duffel_bag is clear
suitcase is relatively clear
messenger_bag is less clear but is hardly used anyway
briefcase should refer to non-school situations
school_bag should refer to school situations

I have no where I'd put satchel but I don't really like its current usage, which is almost exactly school_bag. I know I'm only one person, but never in a million years would I have searched satchel to find the bag in post #419784.

fwiw bookbag is what we're using on 3db for what the object being held in post #419784 and the first thing I would think of, personally.

jxh2154 said:
briefcase should refer to non-school situations
school_bag should refer to school situations

See, this is where I have my misgivings. What really separates a school_bag from a briefcase, then? If they're young? Have a school uniform on? It doesn't seem to add any useful granularity, especially here where they're all very likely to be girls in school uniforms.

DschingisKhan said:
What really separates a school_bag from a briefcase, then?

post #419784 is clearly not a briefcase. If it was a briefcase (a rectangular thing with hinges at one end and catches at the other) then I'd tag it as such regardless of who was holding it.

jxh2154 said:
I have no where I'd put satchel but I don't really like its current usage, which is almost exactly school_bag. I know I'm only one person, but never in a million years would I have searched satchel to find the bag in post #419784.

This one person would though. If you do a google image search for "school satchel" that is what you get. Perhaps this is another regional thing.

wanchan said:
post #419784 is clearly not a briefcase. If it was a briefcase (a rectangular thing with hinges at one end and catches at the other) then I'd tag it as such regardless of who was holding it.

Is this another connotational difference between US and Commonwealth English? If you go to briefcase.com, you see many objects of exactly that sort called "briefcase" and, from what I could tell from the thumbnails, none called "satchel" (which seems to imply a shoulder strap there, actually). The hard clamshell design are labeled as "attache cases."

But as linguistically interesting as this conversation is to me, I think the question really does need answered: What useful granularity does this provide to tagging? I think that single question is more important than every bit of semantic meaning rhetoric that I or anyone else can bring to the thread. If we're going to call some top-loading flap-closure case-like bags without shoulder straps school_bag and others briefcase I feel that there needs to be a clear distinction or we get another mess of ~grey_hair ~silver_hair.

@jxh2154
Would "School Satchel" be a good thing to replace the "Satchel" tag with? It is more to the point.
Where I am from, Satchels are bags that are shoulder carried or hand-carried, they are not Briefcases.

Business people do indeed carry satchels (due to their smaller size). But mostly satchels are popular with people who are in school (high school, college etc).

lol I started this topic to show that the tag school bag, was including too many various bags, including backpacks- which made no sense to me.

The problem to begin with is that the bags carried by Japanese middle/high school students seem to come in different variations. The standard and most common one being the rectangular brown/black leather ones, ie no shoulder straps of any kind present with only a handle (post #349522). Then there are variants of it that have shoulder straps and are worn like a backpack (post #265779) or like a satchel (post #162561).

Then there is another completely different style of school bag (post #405677, post #23683, and post #118532), though it is more consistent in style.

If you remove the randoseru and kindergarten bags, then all the images fall effectively in the two above main types.

All in all, the bag in the first category can be dried down to the definition of: "A black or brown rectangular leather accordion bag with a large over the top flap with a metal lock and/or fastener and usually has two front buckle straps. The top of the flap can either be flat or rounded and always has a handle on it. There is also usually a small gap on the top of the sides formed between the flap and the bag's sides. The bag may have shoulder straps, in which case it can be worn like a backpack or satchel."

The second style of bag is easily defined as a "A rectangular, typically blue, satchel style bag with 2 shoulder straps and a zipper opening at the top."