One Piece Wiki:Guidebook/Page Naming Guidelines

One of the problems sometimes that crops up when using the Japanese naming system is a character will end up with many name spellings.

Why does this happen?
Well, for one Eiichiro Oda does not always supply the correct spelling of a name in English text, in some cases you only see it written in the Japanese text. Sometimes when he does supply the name he will use several variations of the spelling, such as the One Piece money, which has been called both 'Belly' and 'Berry' by Oda. Oda also does not speak English and therefore may occasionally make mistakes himself.

Translators of the raw Japanese manga will often attempt to spell the name, problem is there are sometimes problems with translating from Japanese to English. A good translator will recognise certain Japanese text, such as 'Emiri' are actually how the Japanese are trying to spell the name 'Emily'. A not so good one will take a guess at what they think the name means. Some will take the Japanese text literally as the name without realising it may be the Japanese ways of spelling a non-Japanese word. So 'Emiri' will be translated literally as 'Emiri'.

Usually, most mistranslations are cleared up when the anime airs as the correct pronunciation is revealed. This results in fans of the Japanese version being able to hear clearly for the first time what the name is. However even this is not without problems. Some names sound very close to Japanese words such as 'Chew' sounds like 'Chuu', resulting in more name related errors. Others led to further mistranslations or spelling because of how the Japanese speakers pronounce certain words (example; 'Lice' may end up sounding like 'Rice'). Mostly anime related misspellings are usually made by fan-subbers subbing the series from the Japanese version. Followers of the Fan-sub will then copy, but this is not always the case.

Many spelling mistakes and misnames can be considered no different to art errors made by anime producers when mangaka have yet to produce the actaul colours for the character.

Use

 * Names that appear in the Manga.
 * Names revealed in a SBS
 * Names revealed by the Data Books
 * In the case of Filler characters, if their name is even revealed in the episode/movie/game in Latin text, use that.

Avoid

 * Shounen Jump magazine itself as a source. There have been reports of mistakes made in the past and confusions with character polls.
 * Merchandise based names, these have been noted to use incorrect names in the past (and even misspellings).
 * Game spellings. Examples exist such as "Flanky" and "Lobin" when the correct names should have been "Franky" and "Robin".
 * Anime spellings. Notably even well estalished names can end up being mispelt (Example; during the Water 7 arc "Nico Robines" can be seen on a wanted poster instead of "Nico Robin").

What examples are there?
There are several, like the following:


 * Jaguar D. Saul; also sometimes is written as Hagawa D. Saulo, Jagaur D. Saulo. As of yet there has been no release of his name in anything but Japanese text.
 * Bon Kurei; Because of how his name sounded in the anime, was known as Bon Clay until his wanted poster revealed his correct name in the manga. Some fans still choose to use 'Bon Clay' as it is the name they know him by the most.
 * Chew; In the databook One Piece Red: Grand Characters his name is written as 'Chew', however most fans say the similar Japanese word 'Chuu' is his name.

For more examples see Name Variants.

How do we Handle this?
Until a English text version of a name is revealed, here on Wikia the most popular version of the name will most likely end up being used. After the true spelling is revealed, if that is incorrect, there will be a redirect set up on the page. All information on the page will be transferred to the correct entries name.

If all else fails, the last thing to use is an English dub version. However, this causes problems. See Japanese Vs English names for more details.