The canonical register: Toyotama
Evidence dossier 398 — Toyotama. Every exhibit catalogued, every ruling stated with its grounds.
At a Glance
- Canonical form: Toyotama
- Original script: 豊玉毘売命
- 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. 398 of 437
The Evidence
Exhibit 1 — the attestation. The name is attested as 豊玉毘売命, on the evidence Kojiki (Hoori and Toyotama cycle) and Nihon Shoki (parallel genealogy) set down. On the evidence, it means "Abundant jewel". The canonical transliteration is Toyotama.
Exhibit 2 — the flattened form. The plain form toyotama differs from the canonical Toyotama 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. Toyotama has no independent material cult. Her significance is textual and genealogical, preserved in the Kojiki's narrative of Hoori and the imperial ancestry.
Exhibit 4 — the continuing record. Toyotama is remembered as a tragic mother and a link between the sea and the imperial house. Her story appears in Noh, folk tales, and modern retellings of Japanese myth.
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.
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 Toyotama: canonical, cited, and defended. The keyboard form toyotama 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 /toyotama/ holds the canonical form.
The docket for this ruling: no false forms on the docket; no contested forms attested; the attestation rests on 3 cited sources — Kojiki (Hoori and Toyotama cycle), Nihon Shoki (parallel genealogy), Philippi, Kojiki.
The Register Continues
The register holds 437 entries like this one — each temple with its own ruling. Read the temple's founding dispatch for the story, its Restoration File for the philology, its Resonance File for the industries, or the whole archive end to end.
Continue the register — previous entry: Tōnatiuh (read it) · next entry: Trengtreng (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.