Ọrúnmìlà versus the internet

Court is in session. In the matter of Ọrúnmìlà, the register hears the evidence — the attestation, the marks, and the forms that stand accused.

At a Glance

• Canonical form: Ọrúnmìlà
• Original script: Ọ̀rúnmìlà
• Pantheon: Yoruba
• Convention: modern Yoruba orthography — underdotted vowels and ṣ preserved
• False forms on record: 0
• Contested forms: 1
• Series: The Canonical Register, No. 192 of 287

The Charge

That the name Ọrúnmìlà is routinely written in forms that move, drop, or invent its marks — and that each such form teaches the reader a different, lesser name. The register's task is to separate the honest fallback from the outright false.

The Defense of the Canonical Form

The attested form is Ọ̀rúnmìlà, from the tradition's own record. The canonical transliteration is Ọrúnmìlà.

Every mark is evidence, and every piece of evidence is checkable:

• u → ú — Stress on u: the stress position, as the sources give it.
• i → ì — Stress on i: the stress position, as the sources give it.
• a → à — Stress on a: the stress position, as the sources give it.

The Character Witness

The plain form orunmila is not false — it is a fallback, and the register is exact about what that means. In systems that cannot carry diacritics (legacy databases, older tooling, parts of the address-bar pipeline) the flattened form is the accepted vehicle, and the rulebook names it explicitly as the final rung of the fallback hierarchy: full restoration first, circumflex where attested, macron-only by the academic standard, an attested variant, and only then plain ASCII.

What the fallback status forbids is promotion: orunmila may carry the name where marks are impossible, but it may not represent the name where marks are possible. Every mark it drops — u → ú, i → ì, a → à — is a fact the sources recorded. A fallback is a vehicle, never the primary.

Mitigating Circumstances

Not every non-canonical form is false. These forms carry real scholarly support — they are recorded in the lexicon as variants, with their sources, and the register presents them honestly rather than pretending unanimity:

• Ọ̀rúnmìlà — Fully tone-marked dictionary form with the initial low tone (Abraham). Written Yoruba routinely omits tone marks.. Support: Abraham.

The canonical form stands above the contested ones here by weight of evidence, not by decree. If the scholarship shifts, the register shifts with it — that is what "canonical" means when it is honest.

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: modern Yoruba orthography — underdotted vowels and ṣ preserved. 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.

Registration, Honestly

Three facts govern every domain this project registers. One: IDNA 2008 welcomes the marks — punycode encodes them legally and browsers show them faithfully. Two: welcome is not availability — registrars hold partial inventory, so the ideal form of a name may exist in the protocol yet not in the shop window today. Three: typeability is a separate virtue — a form no one can type on a phone is a form no one will visit, however canonical.

Hence the hierarchy the rulebook enforces: take the most complete form that is both attested and actually registrable, and never accept a wrong mark for the sake of availability. The wrong accent is not a rung on that ladder; it is off the ladder entirely.

The Verdict

So the register finds: Ọrúnmìlà, canonical; orunmila, a sanctioned fallback; the contested forms, recorded with their support; the false forms, ruled against with their violations named. Every line of that finding cites its evidence, and the evidence is open to any reader — the register asks to be checked, not trusted. The temple keeps the canonical form at /sites/orunmila/.

The docket for this ruling: no false forms on the docket; 3 preserved marks verified: u → ú, i → ì, a → à; 1 contested form recorded with its support; the attestation rests on 6 cited sources — Bascom, Ifa Divination: Communication Between Gods and Men in West Africa, Abimbola, Ifá: An Exposition of Ifá Literary Corpus, Idowu, Olódùmarè: God in Yoruba Belief.

The Register Continues

This is one of 287 entries in the Canonical Register — the authoritative reference for every flagship temple. The temple's founding dispatch tells the name's story; its Restoration File details the marks; its Resonance File reads the archetype into the industries. The blog index holds the whole archive, and the Rulebook states the convention this register enforces.

Continue the register — previous entry: Ọrun (read it) · next entry: Ōsaka (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.