Talk:Maruyu/@comment-83.144.127.194-20140109123006/@comment-24210576-20140110065108

One small correction. The Fog ships were written in katakana, not hiragana; イオナ、タカオ、ハルナ as opposed to いおな、たかお、はるな. This was probably done because the latter might be confused with modern JMSDF and Japan Coast Guard ships (e.g. The はるな was a real-life JMSDF destroyer).

As for the "Maru," there was an official custom back in the day to "abbreviate" by writing a representative character of the noun and putting a circle (maru) around it, in order to cut down on having write out the entire name. It'd be a real pain to write "Type 3 Submergence Transport Vehicle Class Transport Submarine" every single time, right? This is thus shown with the red "encircled yu" on Maruyu's swimsuit. Another example would be the "Maru-yon (Fourth) Arms Supplement Program" of the IJN, that gave birth to various vessels including the Agano-class.