Oh, the names
=============

Shirogami is the mascot of cidoku.net. She has very long and wavy
white hair, dresses in suits and dark colors and only speaks rarely.
She's a witch highly skilled in the use of magic, but not so much in
more mundane things.

Kurogami isn't the mascot of cidoku.net, but she shows up often
anyway. She has black hair, straight and not so long, dresses in
colorful feminine clothes, talks a lot and although she can't use
magic, her fists are powerful.

These two stars are the yin and yang, they oppose and complement
each other. And so as different as they are they also have something
in common (besides their red shoes), something that keeps me up at
night: their names might be WRONG.

Their original names were just Whitehair and Blackhair respectively,
in plain English, but one day I decided that Japanese names would
look cooler and be more universal (remember my site is bilingual)
and, lo, it was done. However, now I know much more Japanese than
four years ago and I realized that neither "shirogami" nor "kurogami"
are really Japanese words: the horror! How was I to amend this
without simply reverting them to their original names?

So began my investigation, focusing on Whitehair. To get
"shirogami", I originally took the Japanese word for "white" (白,
shiro) and stuck it to the word for "hair" (髪, kami), changing the
k sound for a g sound. Alas, 白髪 is never read "shirogami"! It's
read "shiraga", "hakuhatsu", "shirokami" or "shirakami", to taste.
According to the entry on 白髪 in the Pixiv encyclopedia[1], the
reading "shiraga" mostly refers to the grey hairs that come with
age, while it's more common to use "hakuhatsu" for white hair in
general, as can be readily seen in the examples on the entry. The
reading "shirokami" is also sometimes used with the general nuance
of "hakuhatsu", like for example in 白髪教団 (shirokami kyoudan)[2].
Finally, the reading "shirakami", I must admit, I didn't look into
too much. However, the popular vtuber Shirakami Fubuki certainly has
white hair, but her "shirakami" is written 白上, not 白髪, but I'm
sure it's what kids these days call a play-on-the-words.

Okay, so? Am I gonna change her name to Shirokami? Well, I could do
it, but there's a reason I said that "shirogami" only might be
wrong. This uncertainty is founded on the possibility that,
although 白髪 isn't read "shirogami", if I could find a character
with white hair called "shirogami" (even without the kanji) created
by a Japanese person, then that would be a good reason to think that
"shirogami" is actually a real word that a real Japanese person
could have come up with. And, well, yeah. There is one: in the
合体コロコロコミック (Gattai Korokoro Comic) magazine there was a manga
titled シロガミくんの神隠し (Shirogami-kun no Kamikakushi) by author
川辺ソーダ where Shirogami, a white haired boy, uncovers a series of
mysterious abductions[3].

And that's the end of the problem. It's fine for my characters to be
named Shirogami and Kurogami. Maybe it was always fine. Now watch
this space as I try to find the boy Shirogami manga and finally read
it.

...

Thricegreat[4] sent me the following email about this article:

> In Japanese, how to read a kanji is not really fixed. It is more
> close to "common sense". There is the standard readings made by
> those who study Japanese language, but people always use
> nonstandard dialects in every language.
>
> Furthurmore, if you use kanji for a name, legally only the kanji
> itself is submitted. Not how to read it. So how to read the kanji
> is in fact freedom of the person now. Though the law will change
> in 2025 and people will have to submit how to read after that. But
> that law doesn't strictly enforce how to read so there will be
> still some freedom.
>
> Therefore although most people just follow the common sense, there
> are names called DQN names or Kira kira names. Those names are
> names that uses atypical kanji readings. Like reading 姫星 as
> "Kitty" or 男 as "Adam". And for character names, those names are
> not that atypical at all. There will be still no legal limits for
> characters at all even after the law change. So those kira kira
> names for characters will be still widespread.
>
> So long story short, I think there is literally no problem to
> read 白髪 as "Shirogami". It's just your choice.

[1] https://dic.pixiv.net/a/%E7%99%BD%E9%AB%AA
[2] https://dic.pixiv.net/a/%E7%99%BD%E9%AB%AA%E6%95%99%E5%9B%A3
[3] https://xcancel.com/you_can_merami/status/1712758720873291981/
[4] https://thricegreat.neocities.org