The canonical register: Jowangshin
Evidence dossier 250 — Jowangshin. Every exhibit catalogued, every ruling stated with its grounds.
At a Glance
- Canonical form: Jowangshin
- Original script: 조왕신 (竈王神)
- Pantheon: Korean
- Convention: the tradition’s own scholarly transliteration standard
- False forms on record: 0
- Contested forms: none attested
- Series: The Canonical Register, No. 250 of 548
The Evidence
Exhibit 1 — the attestation. The attested form is 조왕신 (竈王神), from the tradition's own record. The canonical transliteration is Jowangshin.
Exhibit 2 — the flattened form. The plain form jowangshin differs from the canonical Jowangshin only by convention of display — case, not content. It is acceptable everywhere: in legacy systems, in plain-text citation, in the DNS itself. What is not acceptable is what follows in the register: respellings that change the letters, not just their case.
Exhibit 3 — the physical record. No temple of Jowangshin exists, and none ever did: her cult is domestic by definition, so her material record lives in ordinary things. The National Folk Museum of Korea in Seoul preserves the domestic paraphernalia of the cult — paper god-images of the kind burned at Songje, gosa tables photographed across the twentieth century, and the kitchen shrine shelves still stocked in older houses and restaurants. The richest textual sites are the shamanic manuscripts of Jeju — the bonpuri chants transcribed by Akamatsu Keisuke and Akiba Takashi in 1938, which first pinned the Munjeon Bonpuri to paper — and the Chosŏn-period household calendars that schedule Songje. The hearth itself, rebuilt from wood fire to gas stove to induction, has carried the cult across a century of technology: the fire changed; the watcher stayed.
Exhibit 4 — the continuing record. Jowangshin continues to shape Korean domestic culture. The kitchen remains a symbol of family care and moral order, and traces of the hearth-spirit cult appear in New Year customs, housewarming rituals, and the reverence shown to elders who cook.
The Convention's Own History
Every tradition in this register has its own scholarly transliteration standard, built by its own specialists over decades or centuries, and the register follows each on its own terms: the tradition’s own standard. The principle that unifies them is the one the whole project stands on: a name is evidence, and evidence is not negotiable — not for keyboards, not for convenience, not for anyone.
The Protocol's Position
Can the canonical form live in the address bar? Almost always, yes. IDNA 2008 admits every mark this register defends — the DNS stores them as `xn--` punycode and modern browsers render them natively. The real frictions are practical, not legal: some registrars stock only part of the IDN space, so a theoretically valid name can be temporarily unbuyable; and stacked combinations (an acute riding a macron) remain awkward to type on mobile keyboards even where the protocol accepts them.
The project's answer is a ranked ladder, not a compromise: the full restoration first, then attested fallbacks in descending order of completeness. The ladder's lowest rung, plain ASCII, is a vehicle for legacy systems — sanctioned, but never presented as the scholarly form.
The Verdict
Case closed on Jowangshin: canonical, cited, and defended. The keyboard form jowangshin is the same name in another register of display — always acceptable. The register's files remain open: if a source surfaces that changes any line of this entry, the entry changes. Until then, the temple at /jowangshin/ holds the canonical form.
The docket for this ruling: no false forms on the docket; no contested forms attested; the attestation rests on 4 cited sources — National Folk Museum of Korea, Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Beliefs (2015), s.v. Jowang., Kendall, Laurel, Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits: Women in Korean Ritual Life (University of Hawaii Press, 1985)., Walraven, Boudewijn, Songs of the Shaman: The Ritual Chants of the Korean Mudang (Kegan Paul International, 1994)..
The Register Continues
Entry 250 of 548 in the Canonical Register. Around it: the temple's founding dispatch, the Restoration File on the marks themselves, the Resonance File on the archetype at work, and the Rulebook behind all of it.
Continue the register — previous entry: Jötunheimr (read it) · next entry: Kꜣ (read it).
The Canonical Register is written from the same canonical record as the lexicon itself. If a false form is missing from this page, it is because the evidence does not support calling it false — or because we have not seen it yet. Show us, with a citation, and the register will answer.