Kumano — the one true spelling, and the forms that fail it
The internet spells Kumano more ways than one, and only one of them is the name the sources wrote. This is the register's ruling — canonical, fallback, contested, and false, each in its proper place.
At a Glance
- Canonical form: Kumano
- Original script: 熊野
- Pantheon: Japanese
- Convention: Hepburn with macrons — ō and ū marked, never collapsed to o/u or rewritten ou
- False forms on record: 0
- Contested forms: none attested
- Series: The Canonical Register, No. 221 of 437
The Canonical Form
The name is attested as 熊野, as Kojiki and Nihon Shoki (Jimmu and Yatagarasu) and Kumano shrine records record. On the evidence, it means "Bear plain". The canonical transliteration is Kumano.
No diacritics are required here: the canonical form is the exactness of the spelling itself, the form Hepburn with macrons — ō and ū marked, never collapsed to o/u or rewritten ou demands.
Where the Flattened Form Stands
The plain form kumano differs from the canonical Kumano 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.
The Register of False Forms
No circulating form of this name currently qualifies as false under the register's standard — a rare standing. The spelling is short, sturdy, and rarely mangled.
The Contested Forms
No alternate form of this name carries documented scholarly support in the lexicon's record. The convention here — Hepburn with macrons — ō and ū marked, never collapsed to o/u or rewritten ou — produces exactly one defensible transliteration: Kumano. Forms that differ from it are not contested; they are simply wrong.
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: Hepburn with macrons — ō and ū marked, never collapsed to o/u or rewritten ou. 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.
What the Address Bar Allows
IDNA 2008 permits the letters these restorations use — macrons, acutes, underdots, thorn, ogonek, the lot — and the DNS carries them as punycode (`xn--` labels). Two honest constraints remain. First, registrar inventory: the protocol permits a character; the registrar's stock decides whether the exact domain can be bought today. Second, combined marks: forms like Apṓllōn (acute stacked on a macron) are philologically ideal yet effectively untypeable on phones and unsupported across much of the registration system.
That is why the rulebook keeps a fallback hierarchy — full restoration first, then the circumflex when the source carries one, then the macron-only academic standard, then an attested variant, and only as a last resort the plain ASCII form. Every step down the ladder is still defensible; nothing on the ladder is a wrong mark. A fallback is a choice among attested forms. A false form is not on the ladder at all.
Where the Name Stood First
The Kumano Sanzan (Kumano Hongū Taisha, Kumano Hayatama Taisha, Kumano Nachi Taisha) and the Kumano Kodō pilgrimage routes preserve a landscape of shrines, stone pavements, ritual sites, and Nachi Falls. Archaeological and architectural study documents the region's importance from the Heian period onward. The temple on the web is the newest of these addresses — the first one that fits in a pocket.
The Verdict
The register rules for Kumano, and the ruling is checkable: every mark sourced, every violation stated, every borderline form given its honest standing. kumano carries the name freely — it differs only in display, and the register says so without reservation. Anything else in circulation has its origin and its failure recorded above. That is the whole of the law on this name — and the temple at /kumano/ enforces it.
The docket for this ruling: no false forms on the docket; no contested forms attested; the attestation rests on 3 cited sources — Kojiki and Nihon Shoki (Jimmu and Yatagarasu), Kumano shrine records, Grapard, The Protocol of the Gods.
The Register Continues
Entry 221 of 437 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: Kṣitigarbha (read it) · next entry: Kyōto (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.