Reading order: "Wolf and Spice" or "Spice and Wolf"?


I've noticed the [animation
series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_and_Wolf) named 狼と香辛料, or "Ookami
to Koushinryou", is sometimes referred to as "Spice and Wolf" and sometimes as
"Wolf and Spice". Now, I'm no expert in Japenese reading order, but I do
remember that it's basically the reverse of English; and that "to" means
"and", and "Ookami" means "wolf". That should imply the correct reading order
is "Spice and Wolf" - but is it actually more symmetric and can be read both
ways?




The idea that

> [Japanese] is basically the reverse of English

is mistaken on this point.

Lists in the Japanese language function exactly like their English
counterparts. i.e., if a Japanese speaker says, 大きい方から読みます (I am going to read
from the largest to the smallest), they don't then say 1,2,3,4,5; they say
5,4,3,2,1 -- just like we would in English.

What might lead to the misunderstanding is that (as an oversimplification), a
Japanese sentence is ordered SOV (subject object verb) whereas an English
sentence is ordered SVO (subject verb object). But this is also true of
Classical Latin
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93object%E2%80%93verb#Latin>)...

Might a translator reverse the order of the items in 狼と香辛料?

Sure, because that's not exactly an _ordered list_ , but this implies nothing
about the sequence in which a Japanese speaker would think of the terms.
There's no linguistic reason whatsoever to do so; it's merely a stylistic
choice.

