Ọrun: canonical, contested, and the false forms on record
Misspell a god and you have not spelled the god at all — you have named something else. This is the register entry for Ọrun, with the false forms on record and the honest status of the plain form beneath it.
At a Glance
- Canonical form: Ọrun
- Original script: —
- Pantheon: Yoruba
- Convention: modern Yoruba orthography — underdotted vowels and ṣ preserved
- False forms on record: 0
- Contested forms: none attested
- Series: The Canonical Register, No. 180 of 271
The Canonical Form
The tradition's record preserves this name in its romanized scholarly form: Ọrun — no older script survives to transcribe, so the canonical content is the exactness of the spelling itself.
No diacritics are required here: the canonical form is the exactness of the spelling itself, the form modern Yoruba orthography — underdotted vowels and ṣ preserved demands.
Where the Flattened Form Stands
The plain form orun 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: orun may carry the name where marks are impossible, but it may not represent the name where marks are possible. A fallback is a vehicle, never the primary.
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 forms that do vary from the canonical are handled below: the flattened form (already ruled acceptable) and any contested variants with real support.
The Contested Forms
No alternate form of this name carries documented scholarly support in the lexicon's record. The convention here — modern Yoruba orthography — underdotted vowels and ṣ preserved — produces exactly one defensible transliteration: Ọrun. Forms that differ from it are not contested; they are simply wrong.
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.
The Verdict
Ọrun is the canonical form: attested, checkable, and enforced across the temple, the lexicon, the cards, the APIs, and this register. The plain form orun is sanctioned as the fallback vehicle and nothing more. The false forms above are documented so that no reader has to take the temple's word on faith — the violations are stated, the sources are named, and the register stands open to challenge on every line.
The temple of Ọrun stands at /sites/orun/.
The Register Continues
This is one of 271 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: Orpheús (read it) · next entry: Ọrúnmìlà (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.