[quote=ImportantNobody]
I don't see why there can't be two Ls, perhaps to confuse kira which is the real one? Of course it's painfully obvious to our characters this L couldn't be the previous one, but other people wouldn't know who's who.I'm assuming our character letters are just fake and don't hold any real meaning.As for Near taking the letter L, it was as you say part of keeping L's death a secret, but I truly don't know for sure if you automatically get the "rank" of L or if he just took the letter only for that reason. I thought it was a rank.
[/quote]

I'm almost sure that L is the first person to be at that level. I really don't think that the letter itself has any meaning. For example, if L was to die of old age, N probably wasn't going to take the name L when he succeeded him. So having the letter L doesn't actually mean anything. L's just the person. If the letters were ranks, they'd probably give L the letter A or Z when he got to where he did.