Subject: RE: [FFML] Official Romanization -Reply
From: Richard Lawson
Date: 6/13/1997, 2:06 PM
To: Thomas Schauer <Thomas_Schauer@ITA.DOC.GOV>, "fanfic@fanfic.com" <fanfic@fanfic.com>

Does this make those spellings (instead of "Ukyou", "Ryouga", and
"Tendou") the Official Romanization of those names?

No.  Even though those are the romanizations that I use myself, there
is no, AFAIK, "official" romanization.  

I should have clarified what I meant by "official".

At first, when writing my Nuku Nuku fanfics, I was going to name the boy
"Ryuunosuke".  Then I saw in the anime that his name, romanized,  was
spelled "Ryunosuke".  That became the "official" romanization.

Also, I was going to use the Robotech version of Minmei's name, until I
saw that in Macross they romanized it "Minmay".  That's how I spelled
the name of Nouma's apartment's computer.

In this context, "official" means, "precedent established in the source
material", i.e. the manga. 

I realize that the Memorial Book is not "source material", but I thought
it was pretty close.  :)

In fact, different departments within the Japanese government use
different rules of romanization, so there never will be an "official"
romanization of Japanese in general.
 
tom

-Richard