Entry Names and Aliases
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General instructions for entry names (= titles) and aliases are documented here.
For entry-specific instructions, check the relevant pages:
Rule 7: Name required
All entries require a name.
If all the primary names are whitespace, add the Untitled tag.
Original Language
Rule 24: Original language required
The original language field for entry names should not be “unspecified”.
The “Original language” is the language of the most common, official, primary name. This determines the displayed name when the user setting “preferred display language” is set to “Original”.
This field is automatically set during entry creation but doesn’t automatically update when the names are edited.
The ‘Original language’ title field should be filled in the corresponding ‘Primary name’ title field; the former should not be Unspecified, and the latter should not be empty (unless tagged with untitled).
For example, the song ECHO has its ‘Original language’ title field set to English, while its English ‘Primary name’ title field contains its proper title and is thus not empty.
An example showing the name field of the entry https://vocadb.net/S/68814:
Another example showing the name field of the entry https://vocadb.net/S/916132:
Primary Name
The primary name of the entry includes the official or unofficial romanization and/or English translation.
Rule 26: Prioritize official translations
Prioritize official translations/romanizations even if it is lesser known or breaks VocaDB romanization guidelines.
Do NOT romanize or translate titles if you do not know the language well enough. Machine translations are strictly forbidden. It’s better to leave the fields empty than to have them incorrect.
Rule 30: No machine translations
Do not add machine translated/romanized titles or lyrics.
Rule 8: No name duplication
Missing names should not to be copied from the other name fields.
Rule 29: No new non-English translations
New non-English title translations should not be added without a good reason.
For example, the song entry ECHO should not receive new name/title translations.
Acceptable exceptions:
- Translation is used somewhere elsewhere (add for improved searchability).
- Translation is related to the original name (additional context/value). For example, マトリョシカ is from the Russian word “Матрёшка”, but is also known by its Romanized form “Matryoshka”.
Non-English
This field is for any official title in a non-English language, as long as said title does not qualify instead for the Romanized field. This can be in any script, alphabet, or (non-English) language.
Romanized
This field is for titles that have been transliterated from their non-Latin script to a Latin one. On the database, the most common form of this is romaji; however, this can happen with any non-Latin script, be it Hangul, Hebrew, Cyrillic, or anything else. Do note that languages such as French or Spanish utilize the Latin script, and thus do not qualify for romanization.
Please see the Romanization guidelines for more details.
English
This field is for titles either officially in English or that have been translated into it.
Aliases
Aliases are additional names for an entry. These can range from secondary (but still common) translations to alternative official names, the latter being especially common with otherwise untitled works. Aliases can be in any language or script.