<Snipped quote by The Mad Hatter>
Huh. Well then. Learn something new every day. What does the name mean when read as "Reo/Leo"?
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that it means "mountaintop" or something of the like.
Maybe @Vertigo knows..?
<Snipped quote by The Mad Hatter>
Huh. Well then. Learn something new every day. What does the name mean when read as "Reo/Leo"?
Oh! I'm not an expert on kanji either, haha. But yeah, so, @Xiro Zean, the reading doesn't affect the meaning of the name any. You can use either the Japanese or Chinese reading for kanji in a name, and it doesn't change the meaning itself - only the kanji themselves affect that.
And yeah, I think Reo might be a reading exclusively used in names...? I could be wrong, but I haven't heard that reading for those kanji either. It looks to be used as a name in real life too, though. Might be one of those cases like "Raito" used as an unusual reading, haa.
As for the meaning, 嶺 means peak or summit, and I had to google 臣. Knew that it's used in the word for minister, but alone it seems to mean subject or a retainer? Make of that whatever meaning you will. (Mountaintop would sound cooler than "Retainer of the summit", at least...)
Also, she mentioned that it is spelled like 嶺"=pron. mine" and 臣 "=pron. shin", but could be read as "Matsumi" and pronounced "Reo/Leo", so I am confused like hell and don't even quite know what that means.
A-ha! Yeah, that's what I thought, one of those strange pronunciations used solely for names. And yeah, the athlete is most likely the football player I mentioned, Reo Mochizuki.
Since 臣 means subject, not surprised it also meant slave, haha. But "top slave" sounds like even worse a meaning than "retainer of the summit"! But yeah, like she said, not everyone picks kanji for their meaning, or pay attention to what the kanji used for writing the name mean. For example, a friend of mine is called Minato (港 which means harbour). I'm sure her parents didn't intend her to have meaningful future with harbours. With that said, some do pick based on the meaning, just like some of us here do. That's why compounds like 美 (mi = beautiful) are common.
Haha, I can explain what she meant by this (somewhat). Basically, kanji have On- and Kun-readings. The former is usually known as the "Chinese" reading, while the latter is the "Japanese" one - but both are used in Japanese. Usually, though not always, you would use the kun-reading when the word appears alone without other kanji to make up a word with it. In compound words comprising of multiple kanji, you would often use the On reading.
Now, the kun pronounciation for 嶺 is "mine". So if you were to use that word alone to mean summit/top/etc. that's how you would say it. As for "shin", since 臣 seems to be mostly used in compound words, particularly ones for ministers (that I know of, I'm sure there are uses for it alone, like the old way to say slave that she mentioned) it is often read as "shin". For example, in 大臣 = prime minister.
I'm not sure where Reo/Leo comes from exactly - or other new, name-only ways to pronounce kanji, like the Raito example I gave - if I'm entirely honest. My guess is that those are very, very old and archaic ways to pronounce the kanji, dug up solely to have a unique way to pronounce it in a name. Since that is basically what you can do when picking kanji for a name - you can choose any possible pronunciation for it, no matter how little known. That's why it's impossible for Japanese people to know how to write each others' names upon hearing them, or infer any meaning. They can hazard a guess based on the most common kanji and meaning used for the name, but really, it could be written as anything, haha.
Japanese is fun.
Did some tweaking to my CS.
So... Is this going to actually happen, or what? There's no hurry, I just get nervous when the OOC goes dead, the GM hasn't said anything about any of the characters and even the shit-talking in the Discord seems to have died.