Card names and official translations (v1, draft)

CTCG-NAMES-v1says how to write down a card's name: which card it belongs to, in which language, how the name is known and where it came from. It sits beside the SKU standard: a SKU names one printing, and this standard names the card its printings share, in each language.

Version 1.0 is a draft and may change before it is frozen. No Cambridge endpoint returns these records yet; the shape and rules are published first so that people and agents can check them and build on them.

Where this lives in code. The reference implementation is packages/sku/src/names.ts, exported from @cambridge-tcg/sku. cardName() builds and checks a record; cardNameText() and cardNameKey() give the text form and the match key; chooseCardName() and printingName() pick the name to show; cardRushName(), tcgplayerName() and cardmarketName()are the vendor rules. The record's JSON Schema is /spec/v1/CardName.schema.json.

One name per card and language

<game>-<set>-<number>      the card key

The card key is a CTCG-SKU-v1 canonical SKU without its language and variant segments. op-op01-001-ja, op-op01-001-en and op-op01-001-en-p1 all have the card key op-op01-001.

• A name belongs to a card key and a language.
• A record's lang and scriptare the language and script its text is written in, never the printing's or the source row's. An English name read from a listing of a Japanese printing is an English name.
• A printing's name is its card key's name in the printing's language: op-op01-001-en-p1 is named by the English name of op-op01-001.
• An official translation is the official name of the same card key in another language.
• Variant, parallel, reprint, rarity, condition, grade, illustrator credit and art-style markers are never part of a name. A parallel has its base print's name.
• Where a publisher prints a different name on one specific printing, a record may carry that printing's sku. It then names that printing only.

A name record

{
  "spec_version": "ctcg.card-name/1",
  "card_key": "op-op01-001",
  "lang": "en",
  "text": "Roronoa Zoro",
  "key": "roronoazoro",
  "status": "official",
  "source": "bandai-en",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-29T00:00:00Z",
  "rule": "verbatim"
}

An illustrative record, built for this page. No catalogue row or source was read for it.

How a name is known

official

The rights holder publishes this text for this language: a publisher card list, or the printed card.

vendor

A shop's or marketplace's own title for the card, after a versioned rule has removed its markers.

community

A name from a third-party list.

machine

A machine translation or transliteration.

Showing a name follows these rules:

1. Never present a non-official name as official. Show its status with it.
2. An official record outranks every other for its card key and language. With none, show the best non-official name, in the order vendor, community, machine, with its status visible.
3. Agreement between sources never promotes a status. Three shops printing the same title still give a vendor name.
4. Within the top status, a printing's own record comes before its card key's.
5. If the records of the top status have different keys, the name is in conflict: report the candidates and do not pick one.
6. Records that agree can still differ in form, such as character width. Show the most recently observed one. Between records observed at the same instant, show the first by source, then by text, in Unicode code point order.
7. A missing name is reported as missing. It is never guessed, and a name in another language is not put in its place.

Text form

A record keeps a name in Unicode NFC, trimmed, with each run of whitespace collapsed to one space (U+0020). Whitespace means what ECMAScript's \smatches, which includes the ideographic space U+3000. Nothing else changes: official text keeps the publisher's punctuation (such as ・), letter case and character width.

Match key

To compare names, compute the key: Unicode NFKC, then remove all whitespace and the middle dots U+30FB (・), U+FF65 (･) and U+00B7 (·), then lowercase without regard to locale. Removing comes before lowercasing so that a Greek final sigma (ς) does not depend on spacing. Two texts name the same thing exactly when their keys are equal. Keys are for matching and are never displayed.

モンキー・Ｄ・ルフィ   →  モンキーdルフィ
モンキー・D・ルフィ    →  モンキーdルフィ

The first is printed with a full-width Ｄ (U+FF24), the second with a half-width D. Their texts stay different; their keys are equal.

Taking names from vendor titles

Shops and marketplaces write variant, rarity and condition markers into their titles. Each rule below removes them and returns the name, the illustrator credit if there is one, and the markers it removed; or it refuses, with a reason. A rule never guesses. A changed rule ships under a new version, so a record's rule says exactly how its text was made. Official names need no rule: their rule is verbatim and only the text form applies, and cardName() refuses an official record with any other rule.

cardrush-title/names-1

〔condition〕* name (markers)? 【rarity】 {SET-NUM([RELEASE])?}

1. Put the decoded title in text form.
2. Remove the leading 〔…〕 groups: conditions such as 〔状態C〕 and grades such as 〔PSA10鑑定済〕.
3. Remove the language markers 英語版, 韓国語版, 中国語版, 簡体字版, 繁体字版 where they stand in ( ) or 【 】, as the CardRush collector does.
4. Keep the text before the first 【 or {. The rest is the rarity and the card number. A title with neither is refused (not_a_card_title).
5. If the name ends with one half-width (…) group, split it at /. When every token is a known marker or illust:<credit>, remove the group; the credit becomes illustrator. An unknown token is refused (unrecognised_marker), and so is a second credit (conflicting_illustrators).
6. Any other bracket that is left is refused (unexpected_bracket). A language marker or パラレル left in the name outside those brackets is refused (marker_in_name): the collector reads language markers, and the classifier パラレル, anywhere in a title. An empty name is refused (empty_name).

Known markers: パラレル, 漫画絵, 和柄, 漫画背景, 漫画, マンガ, アルト, オルタネート, and the language markers above.

A language marker says which printing a listing is for, not which language its name is written in, so a record's lang comes from the text and the marker stays in markers. The names in the One Piece titles captured on 2026-10-28 are written in Japanese (lang: "ja"). None of those titles carried a language marker, so how CardRush writes the name on a listing marked 英語版 has not been seen.

tcgplayer-product/names-1

1. Put the product name in text form.
2. Working from the end, remove a collector number written - 069/073 and parenthesised groups, one at a time. A group must be a card number such as (001), or a known variant marker: Parallel, Alternate Art, Box Topper, Manga. Any other group is refused (unrecognised_marker).
3. Any other bracket that is left, or an empty name, is refused.

The product names in the captured price guides are written in English, also on the Pokemon Japan line, whose rows are Japanese printings: Boss's Orders - 069/073 is one of them and gives an English name, lang: "en".

cardmarket-product/names-1

Remove one trailing collector number, an upper-case set code and a number such as (OP01-001) or (P-001). Keep the rest verbatim. The rule knows no variant markers, so any bracket left in the rest, such as (Parallel) or (Pre-Release), is refused (unexpected_bracket), and so is an empty name. The product-list names in the collector's test fixtures are English, lang: "en".

Examples

The titles are identifiers from the collectors' test fixtures. The results are computed by the reference implementation, not typed by hand.

What this standard is not

• Not a SKU mapping. A name never establishes which printing or source product a record is. A name match is not evidence; the price crosswalks follow the same rule.
• Not a translation service. It records names that exist and says how each is known. It produces no translations.
• No trademark claim. Card and character names belong to their owners. Recording a name claims nothing about it.
• Not a data licence. The specification text is dedicated under CC0 (docs/STANDARDS-LICENSE.md). A name taken from a source keeps that source's terms; this standard grants no right to collect, store or republish it.

For implementers

The reference implementation is packages/sku/src/names.ts in the monorepo. The JSON Schema checks structure only; the text form, the key's derivation and the agreement between sku and card_key are checked by cardName(). Implementation rights: Apache-2.0 per the repository LICENSE (licence text) and applicable more-specific notices. The specification text's CC0 dedication does not create a separate code license.

Change history

v1.0 — 2026-10-29. Draft. First publication, in answer to Yu's request that day: “We can set standard for the official translation too, for card names and format, just like SKU.” The card key, the record's fields, the statuses and their order, the text form, the match key and the three vendor rules were designed by the agents who drafted this version, not chosen by Yu. Any of them may change before v1 is frozen; a changed vendor rule gets a new rule version.