Danbooru

Using a character's full name isn't always the best approach

Posted under General

There are already exceptions to this "rule". Angel Beats! characters still don't use their full names despite them being known, because they're considered "spoilers".

Autocomplete being changed could help with some cases, such as typing the first name currently not showing proper results, but this wouldn't help in cases like Eula. I don't really think having multiple entries for the same item because of aliases would be a proper solution either, then you'd just have certain searches that include large tags with lots of aliases being flooded by those tags. I really do not understand why there is so much insistence on using full names (except when there isn't) when it comes at a detriment to the site's usability.

I usually go by what the official company of the series uses for a character's title name, even if the full/real name is given out in supplemental materials or in parentheses. In this case, if you go to the official website, they only use the single names that the BUR uses for all of the characters. Ayaka wasn't on the official website, although I would assume it would be the same for her as well.

https://genshin.mihoyo.com/en/character/mondstadt?char=0
https://genshin.mihoyo.com/ja/character/mondstadt?char=0

As such, I've already voted +1 for the BUR.

Let's check Google, too.

Barbara Pegg: About 1,520,000 results
An interesting thing about that is the autocomplete adds "age" to the end of the search. The numbers are likely muddled by the top results being about a 1967 film where a character with the same name is the main character as well as many results for things like Facebook accounts for real people.

Genshin Impact Barbara Pegg: About 61,100 results
The top two results are the fandom wiki and... a shipping wiki page about pairing her and Jean.

Genshin Impact Barbara: About 4,060,000 results
Links to character guides, wikis, etc.

Tags should be used on a case-to-case basis.
If a character is most known under their full name, the full name should be the tag.
Same if the char is best known under an abbreviation (because by that logic we would have to rename tons of Arknights characters, just saying).

So, to say that this is a side-wide rule shouldn't hold up and it tries to fit tagging into a corset that's not really usable.

Provence said:

Same if the char is best known under an abbreviation (because by that logic we would have to rename tons of Arknights characters, just saying).

One big difference between those two cases to me is that all of the Arknights characters are known and addressed by operator names, which are nicknames in most cases (and even so, there aren't all that many of them that have known real names, let alone complete full names. A lot of the real names we have are only first names, such as Indra = Hannah).

On Genshin Impact on the other hand, these characters are already known and addressed by their first names (except maybe like, Tortellini Tartaglia). Barbara isn't a character known as like, "Deaconess" that we decided to tag by full name instead, she's already known as Barbara in the first place. Jean isn't a character named "Lionfang" that we decided to tag by full name instead, she's already known as Jean. Same with Mona, Lisa, so on so forth.

Updated

Astolfo said:

One big difference between those two cases to me is that all of the Arknights characters are known and addressed by operator names, which are nicknames in most cases (and even so, there aren't all that many of them that have known real names, let alone complete full names. A lot of the real names we have are only first names, such as Indra = Hannah).

On Genshin Impact on the other hand, these characters are already known and addressed by their first names (except maybe like, Tortellini Tartaglia). Barbara isn't a character known as like, "Deaconess" that we decided to tag by full name instead, she's already known as Barbara in the first place. Jean isn't a character named "Lionfang" that we decided to tag by full name instead, she's already known as Jean. Same with Mona, Lisa, so on so forth.

True, but I meant it more as a way to show how absurd such a "rule" would be if applied to everything.
See it more as an argumentum ad absurdum.

I agree with OP. Too many boorus get bogged down in the "rules". E621 for instance is like a hellscape of stupid "rules" that hang like large black clouds that disallow any common sense to shine through. If a certain game character is strongly known by a single name, the tagging system should cater to that reality.

It's like on Wikipedia...the article for "Nicolas Cage" is TITLED "Nicolas Cage"...they don't force you to use his full real name "Nicolas Kim Coppola" they know that most people are going to know him by "Nicolas Cage" so that's what they use.

GoldenRonald said:

It's like on Wikipedia... the article for "Nicolas Cage" is TITLED "Nicolas Cage"...they don't force you to use his full real name "Nicolas Kim Coppola" they know that most people are going to know him by "Nicolas Cage" so that's what they use.

I could agree on this, BUT, Wikipedia also don't use qualifiers for people/characters unless they are actually necessary.

GoldenRonald said:

What kind of argument is that? What makes it "actually" necessary or not?

Probably the whole reason we use them in the first place? So that multiple characters with the same name aren't sharing a single tag and people can actually find what they're looking for.

blindVigil said:

Probably the whole reason we use them in the first place? So that multiple characters with the same name aren't sharing a single tag and people can actually find what they're looking for.

Are you expecting another Eula to be added to the Genshin Impact game thus conflicting with the "eula_(genshin_impact)" tag? Cause that seems highly unlikely.

Sorry I think I misunderstood what mongirlfan was saying when she said "qualifiers"...thought she was basically saying like...another name. Whatever. I'm all for qualifiers. It's a freaking video game character not a real person. Their existence is inextricably tied to the game. Tom Hanks could quit acting tomorrow and become a veterinarian...Eula can't quit Genshin Impact.

Updated

GoldenRonald said:

Are you expecting another Eula to be added to the Genshin Impact game thus conflicting with the "eula_(genshin_impact)" tag? Cause that seems highly unlikely.

No? How did you even come to that? Mongirlfan was saying that using just "Eula" would force us to use a qualifier, because even though she doesn't need it it'll be forced through anyway.

blindVigil said:

No? How did you even come to that? Mongirlfan was saying that using just "Eula" would force us to use a qualifier, because even though she doesn't need it it'll be forced through anyway.

I updated my post...before you posted this. Might want to try that F5 button out every once in a while before you respond.

GoldenRonald said:

I updated my post...before you posted this. Might want to try that F5 button out every once in a while before you respond.

I intentionally left out the rest of your reply, because it was irrelevant to my reply. If you wanna discuss the thread topic, do so, keep petty comments to yourself.

Overall, I'd say that using "<SINGLENAME>_(Genshin_Impact) would be the most intuitive way of doing things, both for people who play Genshin and those who don't. But since this is a contentious issue with many people worried that it might set a "bad precedent" for other changes, I'm not going to push for either way for now, so my current vote is ambivalent.

Anyhow...

Night_Wing said:

For simplicity, I would suggest keeping this tag named as Eula.

mongirlfan said:

I could agree on this, BUT, Wikipedia also don't use qualifiers for people/characters unless they are actually necessary.

GoldenRonald said:

Are you expecting another Eula to be added to the Genshin Impact game thus conflicting with the "eula_(genshin_impact)" tag? Cause that seems highly unlikely.

Sorry I think I misunderstood what mongirlfan was saying when she said "qualifiers"...thought she was basically saying like...another name. Whatever. I'm all for qualifiers. It's a freaking video game character not a real person. Their existence is inextricably tied to the game. Tom Hanks could quit acting tomorrow and become a veterinarian...Eula can't quit Genshin Impact.

blindVigil said:

No? How did you even come to that? Mongirlfan was saying that using just "Eula" would force us to use a qualifier, because even though she doesn't need it it'll be forced through anyway.

Just "Eula" alone would need the qualifier though. It's a real-life feminine given name and also the name of various places and rivers in Germany (and also the USA). EULA is also the acronym for End-User License Agreement, you know, that annoying legal license document thingy that we have to click to say we've read it every single time we install something (from a big enough company).

Definitely needs a qualifier. Otherwise someone who sees a EULA in an image might decide to tag it so. Sure, autocomplete is color-coded, but someone might miss it, especially since it's only four letters.

I'd say it needs to be done on a case-to-case basis.
May look weird at first but when you look into it a bit further you should notice that there's a system behind the different naming of characters.

Just saying, I don't think the Fate tagging conventions should be ported over to other franchises, and probably not even to Fate itself but that's beating a dead horse by now.
But for franchises with more...manageable amount of chars the most intuitive way of tagging should come through, and that's using the best known name a character is known for (and that's not Eula Lawrence).

It's still is horribly ironic that Eula Lawrence is being held up as the example of a character whose last name isn't important when it's such a central and crucial part of her character story and emphasized heavily in her own character lines. Like I could see argument with the other characters, but it's just such a core piece of her character that to ignore it feels outright foolish.

NWF_Renim said:

It's still is horribly ironic that Eula Lawrence is being held up as the example of a character whose last name isn't important when it's such a central and crucial part of her character story and emphasized heavily in her own character lines. Like I could see argument with the other characters, but it's just such a core piece of her character that to ignore it feels outright foolish.

To Genshin players, yes. I personally don't know anything about Genshin lore. This is what this discussion is about i believe, making the name tags intuitive to people who don't know much about Genshin Impact. so tertiaries

Username_Hidden said:

To Genshin players, yes. I personally don't know anything about Genshin lore. This is what this discussion is about i believe, making the name tags intuitive to people who don't know much about Genshin Impact. so tertiaries

And yet we push all these overly complicated character skin name tags that no one but the game players would know about, but then turn around and make the argument here that we can't even handle a last name.

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