Suggest renaming Mariasurīru moon base
Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 10:42 pm
First, I simply noticed that the name didn't display properly on the landing pad:
Then I found the original submission and saw it was an attempt to refer to the Marius Hills Hole as "Marius Rille" but in Japanese since this location for a proposed base was discovered by the Japanese space agency, JAXA. The Japanese actually call this place マリウス丘縦孔 (Mariusu Okatatekou) or マリウスヒルの縦孔 (Mariusu Hiru no Tatekou, where "Mariusu Hiru" is simply "Marius Hills" in Japanese phonetics (there are no plurals in Japanese, so they tend to transliterate in singulars, with the occasional exception like "furuutsu" for "fruit" where they use the English plural even when speaking about a single fruit)).
JAXA's own reports call it the first one, also referring to it in English as the Marius Hills Hole. (Both versions are essentially the same thing -- just with one using the Japanese word for hill and the other using the English word. Even in JAXA's report, they put ヒル (the English word "hill") in parentheses after the 丘 kanji for hill.)
Therefore I suggest naming this base simply "Marius Hills". It is Japanese convention not to re-name something into Japanese if it already has a name in another language (the notable exception being the sport of baseball, which was introduced to Japan well before this convention came about, so the sport has a Japanese name, yakyuu).
That also avoids the problem of the i with macron not displaying on the landing pad (simply using two i's, which is what the macron represents, also would avoid that).
Then I found the original submission and saw it was an attempt to refer to the Marius Hills Hole as "Marius Rille" but in Japanese since this location for a proposed base was discovered by the Japanese space agency, JAXA. The Japanese actually call this place マリウス丘縦孔 (Mariusu Okatatekou) or マリウスヒルの縦孔 (Mariusu Hiru no Tatekou, where "Mariusu Hiru" is simply "Marius Hills" in Japanese phonetics (there are no plurals in Japanese, so they tend to transliterate in singulars, with the occasional exception like "furuutsu" for "fruit" where they use the English plural even when speaking about a single fruit)).
JAXA's own reports call it the first one, also referring to it in English as the Marius Hills Hole. (Both versions are essentially the same thing -- just with one using the Japanese word for hill and the other using the English word. Even in JAXA's report, they put ヒル (the English word "hill") in parentheses after the 丘 kanji for hill.)
Therefore I suggest naming this base simply "Marius Hills". It is Japanese convention not to re-name something into Japanese if it already has a name in another language (the notable exception being the sport of baseball, which was introduced to Japan well before this convention came about, so the sport has a Japanese name, yakyuu).
That also avoids the problem of the i with macron not displaying on the landing pad (simply using two i's, which is what the macron represents, also would avoid that).