

I noticed in one of the episodes that their homeroom teacher called her
Rakita-san (or it might have been -chan), whereas Bocchi and everyone else
calls her Sotoka-san (or Sotoka-chan or just Sotoka). It would seem to be odd
that the teacher is on more familiar terms with Sotoka than Bocchi and the
others to be calling her by her first name. On the other hand, all her
students are calling her Teru-chan, so it could be the case.

And in the episode where they go to the school, Bocchi's school issued
swimsuit had 一里(Hitori) written on it, while Sotoka's had ラキター(Rakita).

On page 80 of the first volume of the manga, Sotoka's name is listed as
ソトカラキター and on page 1 Hitori Bocchi's name is listed as 一里ぼっち.

Is it then the case that Sotoka's surname is actually Rakita and the manga and
anime are changing the order of names to reflect what is more typical in
western countries?

## Additional Info

  * The swimming part can be found starting at page 20 of volume 2 of the manga and shows the same names on their swimsuits as the anime.
  * The incident of the teacher calling her Rakita-san can be found on page 105 of volume 2.


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hitori-bocchi-no-marumaru-seikatsu
Is Sotoka Rakita's name order reversed because she's a foreigner?


I noticed Sotoka's name is usually spelled with a dot in the middle, like so:
ソトカ・ラキター

So I started by checking Tom Cruise's Wikipedia page:
<https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%88%E3%83%A0%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AF%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BC%E3%82%BA>

Sure enough, the dot was present in this name too, as well as all the names on
the page. And further research led me to this Stackexchange question:
<https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/18069/middle-
dot-%E4%B8%AD%E9%BB%92-in-non-japanese-names>

It would seem this dot is used to denote a foreign name, and it would seem
western name order is usually preserved for western names (as
[Makoto](https://anime.stackexchange.com/users/102/makoto) says in the
comments). Which means Rakita is Sotoka's surname, and it was possibly easily
inferred by anyone who understood the Japanese.

One caveat. The site [jisho.org](https://jisho.org/search/%E4%B8%AD%E9%BB%92)
states the symbol is used to separate names spelled in Katakana, and Sotoka's
name is spelled entirely in Katakana (which one would expect from a foreign
name). But when we consider that it is Rakita on both her gym clothes and
school swimsuit, and everyone else has their surname written on those, and all
the other info, I believe it is still reasonable to conclude that her surname
is Rakita.


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