Nanori

Nanori (Japanese: 名乗り, "to say or give one's own name") are the often non-standard kanji character readings (pronunciations) found almost exclusively in Japanese names.

However, names may also contain rare characters which only occur as parts of names, or use non-standard readings of common characters.

[1] For example, the character 希, meaning "hope" or "rare", has standard pronunciations ki (キ), ke (ケ), and mare (まれ).

Here, 飯, a character meaning 'meal', is normally read as either meshi (めし) or han (ハン), but in the context of this name the special nanori reading ii (いい) is used instead.

[3] Often (as in the previous example), the nanori reading is related to the general meaning of the kanji, as it is frequently an old-fashioned way to read the character that has since fallen into disuse.