shirayuki = snow white??; I thought white = shiro.. (not familiar with japanese sorry..)

Then again, how the hell those teeth got upside down..

I don't know Japanese, but Snow White (the character and story) in Japanese is 白雪姫 (Shirayukihime), which can be broken down to "White Snow Princess." The ship Shirayuki is just 白雪, so is just "White Snow."

well, that's one way to ruin a fairy tale...

western_gunner said:

shirayuki = snow white??; I thought white = shiro.. (not familiar with japanese sorry..)

Then again, how the hell those teeth got upside down..

NWF_Renim said:

I don't know Japanese, but Snow White (the character and story) in Japanese is 白雪姫 (Shirayukihime), which can be broken down to "White Snow Princess." The ship Shirayuki is just 白雪, so is just "White Snow."

"Shira" is an older pronunciation for "Shiro". It is generally only retained in word compounds, such as shiratori (White Bird, AKA Swan), shirako (milt, AKA sperm 'roe'), shirasagi (white heron), shirahata (white flag), Shiratsuyu (white dew, also the name of a certain Number 1 ship), etc.

A lot of Kancolle ship names are like that (uncommon kanji pronunciation), which is why there are frequent jokes about the inability of ships (and Admirals) to read another ship's (or their own, in some cases) names.

Case in point:

Sendai -> Kawauchi
Musashi -> Takezou
Nagato -> Nagamon
Ikazuchi -> Kaminari
Inazuma -> Den
Shoukaku -> Kakezuru (mistake made by US Intelligence, who managed to mix the names up further into Kadekuru)

This joke is pretty common across multiple works of Japanese fiction (e.g. Son Gokuu -> Mago Gosora), as Japanese personal names are notoriously hard to pronounce based solely on their kanji alone. Legal documents and official forms will specifically have a section for the furigana reading of relevant names.

Take the name 大翔. The most common reading is "Hiroto", but it can also be read as "Daito", "Taito", and even "Masato" and "Haruto". There's also "Yamato", taking the reading of "Yama" from 大和.

Then you have cheeky parents naming their kids "Taiga" (Tiger)...

Heck, I think Detective Conan had at least one story arc/mystery with the crucial clue being hidden in the way a name was written in the hotel register.

If you want to get really pedantic, (as far as I know) there's not actually any legal requirement for the reading of the kanji in a name to match with any pronunciation. While it certainly would be strange, there's nothing technically wrong with having 大翔 as a name, but pronouncing it, say, Takeyuki. You'd be constantly having to tell people how to pronounce it though. Most people wanting to be 'fancy' would just use obscure and/or archaic kanji or readings of.

Also as an aside on names, there is a restriction on baby name registration - first, the kanji used have to be from the Joyou and Jinmeiyou kanji lists; and some names aren't allowed for example, you can't register a baby's name as 悪魔 /akuma/ (as one family tried to in 1993) - though as one of my professors said, you could totally name them Mark, using 魔悪 /maaku/.

NNescio said:

(...)

Nagato -> Nagamon

(...)

Dunno if you're joking, but I laughed hard.

Pronak said:

Dunno if you're joking, but I laughed hard.

I'm guessing that's where the "Nagamon" thing came from in the first place.