How do writers decide on a yomikata of a made up word written in kanji?

Like when a manga writer comes up with a technique name for a character and writes it with kanji. How does he decide upon the proper way of reading it?

4 comments
  1. Most of the time, it’ll follow conventional practices, so if it uses real words as part of it, it’ll use those pronunciations. Otherwise, it’ll often use on’yomi if it’s just a series of kanji that don’t necessarily make up a recognized word. For example, 「界王拳 (かいおうけん)」 uses only on’yomi similar to the way that real words made up of only kanji with no okurigana tend to do. But something like 「火中天津甘栗拳 (かちゅうてんしんあまぐりけん)」 uses both since 火中 and 天津 both use on’yomi as real words and 拳 typically gets on’yomi in attack names, whereas 甘栗 is a real word that uses kun’yomi.

    Then you have stuff like 「世界 (ザ・ワールド)」 because the author said so.

    But ultimately, it really comes down to that last one.

  2. Common thing I’ve seen is they usually use kanji that relate to the idea they are trying to convey and then use typical rules to read them…such as using onyomi for reading multiple kanji combined into a single word….usually for made up words they will have furigana at least the first time you see the word..or after some time has passed since you last saw it….but the furigana may not always match the correct way of saying the word…because it may just be a synonym in the furigana part…like having 神 and right beside it in furigana ゴッド

  3. Someone who is good at drawing and storytelling should not necessarily have a good sense of language as well. In fact, in any major publishing house, there are elite editors who graduated from elite universities who support the manga artists. (And even then, they still make errors from time to time.)
    This is one of the reasons why I myself do not recommend minor manga or manga from small publishers to people trying to learn Japanese.

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