I think I have a good idea why, but wanted to discuss to hear other perspectives on it. Or perhaps if anyone has any insight on that particular spelling?
I used to work in Japan as an ALT and noted that Japanese people sometimes spell / pronounce their own name in a way that is not how they would do it in their own language.
For example, I had a student whose name was Kaito, but pronounced it as /kaɪt/ ; eliminating the final vowel.
I assume this is some form of “accomodation” for foreigners or code switching? I always told my student, Kaito, “You don’t have to say or spell your name differently if you don’t want to.” He seemed to acknowledge that, but kept doing it, so I just assumed it was his preference. Maybe he thought it sounded/looked cooler?
We could open a further discussion here too about the abomination that is romanization (hepburn vs. nihon-shiki vs. Kunrei vs etc). As a teacher, the differences among these styles has always created confusion for students when interpreting the sound. This was mainly due to the fact that I was using Hepburn style and they were using one of the other 2 styles that would very often cause confusion.
However, back to the person in question, the author of Bleach, Tite Kubo:
When I first started reading his stuff, a few years before learning Japanese, I would pronounce his name as “Tea-teh,” but the Ti sound only exists in Japanese insofar as it can be produced via Katakana, to represent a foreign sound. Otherwise, the ティsound technically doesn’t exist. Another potential misreading would be like the word “tight,” but that’s less likely, I think.
So, was this just a stylistic choice by the author, or a misunderstanding about his own name written in the Alphabet and how it would be read phonetically? Maybe when he was a cute little 一年生 he spelled it that way and it just stuck?
by Ginger-Wanderlust