Every time you call Nishioka "Yoshi"

I thought I may be enchanting some black magic spell over the Twins with your trickery.

For the record, I have nothing personal against kittens per se.

Birdo, not Yoshi, was the one who used his eggs as projectiles (and yes, despite being pink and wearing a bow, Birdo was male, according to the Super Mario Bros. 2 manual). Yoshi and his friends/relatives hatched from eggs, but he didn’t eat or spit them – your only interaction with them was watching them hatch when you spawned a fresh Yoshi.

I like dogs.

I like Yoshi better. Whatever ESPN calls him is what he’ll be known as, and I’m betting on Yoshi.

This is something that bugs me too, you hit my feelings square on the head. It seems like people only want to call him Yoshi because of repressed nostalgia for Super Mario Bros… That’s not his name! Get over it!

His name is Tsuyoshi, not Yoshi. If you don’t want to call him “Nishi”, can’t you atleast muster the decency to call him by his actual name? It’s not that hard—think “tsunami”. Then say “Tsuyoshi”. The “Tsu” sound is the same in both. See? Not that hard folks!

Nishi is a part of his natural Japanese name. Yoshi is not.

Look at these character translations:
Tsuyoshi = 剛
Nishioka = 西岡
Nishi = 西
Yoshi = よし

Which of these things is not like the other one???

Do you see “Yoshi” anywhere in “Tsuyoshi Nishioka”? What about “Nishi”?

It makes a lot more sense calling him Nishi rather than Yoshi. Yoshi is a distinctly different Japanese name, whereas Nishi is actually part of Tsuyoshi Nishioka’s name.

First, let me say that I have no problem with “Nishi”, I agree that it’s preferable to call a guy what he prefers to be called, and we can probably do better for an alternate nickname than “Yoshi”. That said, I’m going to take the devil’s advocate position here…

To start with, why should what he wants to be called have any bearing on what random people on the internet call him in posts he will never read? I doubt Jesse Crain liked to be called “Crainwreck” and Punto liked being called “Little Nicky Punto”, yet we had no problem doing so. Maybe it’s not exactly nice, but I also don’t see it as some sort of great insult if we post pictures of a fictional green dinosaur in game threads when he does well, unless it escalates to TwinkieTowners showing up at Target Field and pelting him with green spotted eggs or something.

Regarding “Yoshi” not being part of his name as it’s written in Japanese, I see that as even more irrelevant. Nicknames, especially pun-based ones, are almost always based on what a name sounds like, not how it’s written. Also, we rarely write in Japanese around here, so “yoshi” IS part of his name for 99% of Twins fans, just as much as whatever characters make up “Joe Mauer” in Japanese would be part of his name if he played for the Nippon Ham Fighters.

He’s Nishi when he’s dandy and Yoshi when he lays an egg.