[ANSTHRLD] Help! I am SO totally clueless on Japanese Names

[Kathleen O'Brien]

At 10:52 PM 6/8/2007 -0500, you wrote:
>Drats. That is some pretty definitive information there. I am going to
begin
>drafting my email to the submittor about this.
>
>Thank you very
much, for your time and effort on this one.


No problem.  Glad to be of help.

When I have to write email for situations like this, I will often offer the
"what it would take to change the precedent" option as well, though it's
rare the submitter can address that piece.  It makes them feel that you're
not telling them an outright "no".  Instead, you're giving them a list of
what they'll need if they want to pursue the name in the form that they
want it.

In this case, what would be needed to overcome the cited precedent would be
for the submitter to find documentation of at least a few individuals in
period whose names included at two nanori at the same time.  In other
words, if a man was known as <Masamori> as a child and at some point, he
became known as <Nobu'naga>, that wouldn't count since he was not known as
<Masamori> and <Nobu'naga> at the same time.

The thing to watch here is that many modern history books often create a
"modern" version of a person's name that doesn't match what they were known
as in period.  I've routinely seen that in histories covering Western
Europe and would not be at all surprised if the same thing occurred in
modern histories that cover Japan as well.

Good luck!

Mari
P.S.  I just noticed that in the examples towards the end of my previous
email, I left the accent out of <Nobu'naga>.  Sorry about that.  You'll
want to fix them if you cut and paste any of that to your email to the
submitter.