http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/player/htm/ki000209.html

Does anyone know why Fujisawa Kazunari is written as 藤澤 while his father and his daughter use 藤沢.

This is just something I got curious about today.

As far as I know these two are exactly the same - one simplified and one traditional.

See https://ja.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B2%A2

Yes, I know they are the same meaning. I don't know why the one he chooses to use for his name is different than his father's and his daughter's.

Someone asks about these characters here: http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa ... 1431819839

According to that, the difference is pretty much along the lines of what macelee said (沢 is the simplified version of the character).

As such, it seems to make sense to me that a younger person would be more likely to use the simplified version.

Both should be correct, I think.

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be immersed

I have been told that he was estranged from his father and, in turn, from his daughter. I have always assumed that the choice of kanji reflected that but have no evidence that it is indeed the case. Note that Rina was officially a student of her grandfather rather than her father.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

There is no guarantee that seeing these versions even on a Nihon Ki-in website is an indication of the player's own preference. Kazunari's name has usually appeared in the simplified form in Nihon Ki-in paper publications, for example. Conversely, Rina's name has often appeared in the old form. I'd be reasonably confident, on the basis of past experience, in saying that the old form is both father and daughter regard as strictly "correct". In addition, I've seen lists where people have categorised famous people into those that use the 藤沢 form and those that use the 藤澤 form. The go players fall into the latter category. However, I'm unsure how these lists are compiled.

It's a widespread issue. When the Toyo Kanji were introduced around 100 additional "unofficial" characters were excused for use in names. In any case, many people who had old characters in their names refused point blank to change their own usage, but as newspapers and so on had to use the new limited fonts, in print the simplified versions usually appeared. However, over time, the Toyo Kanji proved far too limited in all sorts of other fields (e.g. names of chemicals or place names) and more and more old characters have crept back in to normal use, so that the number of characters a passably educated person can be expected to know has now more or less doubled. Also, the introduction of digital fonts has made use of unusual characters so cheap that even some quite rare characters are coming back into use. (In similar fashion, I sense that old characters are gradually resurfacing in China, and quite a few new characters are being invented on the internet).

As I said, it is my experience that people that own these "dual" names tend to prefer them the old way, but I've only come across a couple of situations where the owners actually got upset by use of the new versions. Perhaps they are so used to having their names misread. The most famous Fujisawa, Hideyuki, got upset about people calling him Shuko, but eventually learned to tolerate it. Others just don't care. I recall asking a shogi pro if her name was Takojima or Takoshima (both forms having appeared on tv and in Nihon Shogi Renmei publications). She sweetly replied that I could call her whatever I liked, and refused to plump for one over the other to me.

But we shouldn't be surprised by this. It happens in English. E.g. some people called originally Cooke (old English spellings often ended in -e) like to insist on that usage, while others have been happy to switch to modern Cook (and there's a host of similar examples). Mispronunciations are likewise common in English: some people wrongly say Mainwaring as it is written, making some owners of the name wince. Some such owners have responded to this by changing the spelling of their name to Mannering. For some reason my Northern English name routinely scrambles the brains of Southern English people (and Americans), so that e.g. whenever I used to go to press conferences and registered at reception by giving my name, the PR lady (it was always a lady) would hear Fairbairn and write down Fairchild, Fairweather, Fairbrother, Fairburn, Fairbrain and a few others. I might be misremembering but I don't think I ever got it done right even once (until they had got to know me).

This confusion happens in other languages (and I'd like to hear your examples), but a well known one here, I imagine, because there are so many chess players here, will be Alekhine. Should it be Alyokheen with stress on the 'yo' (the Russian way), or Alekeen with stress on the 'ee' as in a BBC radio interview with him where he chose not to question that pronunciation (and he spoke damned good English, by the way), or should it be Alekine with the sound of cows and stress thereon, as most English speakers seem to say?

Going back to go, the Koreans made administrative dispensations when they promulgated official romanisations which allowed names to be written in idiosyncratic ways. In just the same way that Nihon Ki-in editors pick their own characters without reference to the name owners, Korean editors do exactly the same (even in Hangeul, incidentally, because there are some complex sound-change rules which may or may not be reflected in the spelling). I know, from having received name cards from the players concerned, that there are widely touted romanised variants that their owner definitely does not use. One of the more prominent players, you may recall - Cho Hun-hyeon - is usually presented as Cho Hunhyun (even though the two 'u's are different sounds) but when he appeared as one of the famous people who got to draw lots on tv in the Korea/Japan World Cup, his name was flashed up around the world as Jo Hunhyun. We can be sure, too, that many people now think there is a Mr Hunhyun, just as there is a Mr Kaiho and a Mr Seigen.

You can see now why Confucius is regarded as a Sage. His most famous advice was "First, rectify the names."

My preference, in such cases, is to use the spelling preferred by the person (if known), even if it contradicts standardized romanization schemes. For example, my first name is "Brian", though people commonly spell the same sounding name as "Bryan". I'd prefer that people use "Brian", even if they happen to think that "Bryan" is a more logical way of spelling my name.

I don't know Cho Hunhyun's preference in spelling his name, if he even has one, but if he writes his name a certain way, I'd prefer to follow that format.

For actual words, that don't belong to anybody, I'd say that using one of the widely-accepted standards is best - though no standard is perfect in Korean from my perspective, since there are a variety of different sounds that can arise from the same Hangul character depending on whether it's part of a batchim, for example.

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be immersed

Hmmm. Should I change my name to Maleore?

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Actually, I've akways wanted to know how to pronounce the names of Mr. Dinerstein, Mr. Cornel Burzo, Mr. Jasiek, and come to think of it, even Mr. Fairbairn.

I have next to zero knowledge of the first three languages; at least in the case of an English name, an IPA notation should be quite sufficient.

All these years I've only seen these names and many more in text form, and never or seldom heard them spoken out loud, especially by the individuals themselves in their native language. Very curious.

Of course, for John who is an expert of the Chinese language (and Japanese), and some other folks here, they understand all the fun and confusions with all the different locations, provinces, and dialects of the Chinese language. Truly messy.

I just remembered a funny example.

One of my college classmates' family name was Jones. Easy enough. He married his high school sweetheart whose family name was Mason. (Still OK, so far? )

They decided to combine their family names into a new family name -- Masonjones.

Trouble. Whenever they gave out this new family name over the phone, people invariably would misspell it; and they would not find out until after the fact, when the misspelled version had already entered the many databases -- nightmare.

Later, they adopted a tesuji: instead of pronouncing it normally, as spelled, ['meɪ_sən_dʒonz], they tried various forms of mangled pronunciations, like [mə_'siː_dʒə_niːz], which would completely baffle the person on the other end of the line, so they'd be forced to ask for the spelling, which is exactly the point.

Telephone often adds to the problem. Many sound wave length which are used in speech are obviously not transmitted. My name has a “p“ in it but on the phone it is allways misunderstood as a “t“. Don't bother to correct any more ...

Yes, some frequencies are cut off; F and S are also easily mixed up. Thus, the redundancies 'p for Peter', 'f for Frank', etc.

Current technologies like Skype, Youtube, etc. have solved this problem ?

It is amazing how often I spell my name over the phone and it comes back as Sawthort.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

You might have thought my surname "Simons", which is pronounced as the forename "Simon" (long i) with an "s" at the end would be relatively simple to spell, but it invariably ends up as various combinations of S(i/y)(m/mm)o(n/nd)s", getting everything wrong resulting in Symmonds.

I just remembered another issue: Chinese and Koreans especially, and also sometimes Japanese, are prone to omit surnames of western players, so that in Chinese, for example, Michael Redmond often becomes Mike (Maike, or more fully Maike Leiming). In Korea Dinerchtein is usually Sasha (Sya-sya). In Japan Catalin Taranu was long Taranu.

Slightly different is Makumahon in Japanese, where the Japanese borrower clearly did not know the right pronunciation of McMahon - but then English speakers argue over the spelling of that anyway!

Don't tell them how we pronounce Toyota and Subaru. Not to mention Godzilla.

And don't tell the French how we used to pronounce Renault.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.