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.
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."
