I’m reading the story “Secret” in Satori Reader. At one point it’s mentioned there is a knife that is inscribed with its owners “イニシャル”. I understand this means “initials,” but I’m not sure what that means exactly in the context of a language that regularly uses four different writing systems.
If we’re talking about a Japanese name, is it the first kana of each name? The first letter as written with the Latin alphabet? Etc
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It doesn’t clarify, there’s no way to know from this alone
はい、イニシャルは “initial” です！
Probably first letters of their name in romaji.
The イニシャル is going to be first letter(s) of the romanized version of the name. A big hint is that イニシャル is a loan word, meaning it’s going to have to do with a concept that there wasn’t a Japanese word for, or that is slightly different than what was used in Japanese before the word was borrowed. It’s sometimes interchangeable with the Japanese word 頭文字, but 頭文字 can refer to the first kana of any word, not just names, or the first romanized letter in a word, while イニシャル is used primarily for names.
Quoting from the discussion thread under episode 14:
>>> It’s Latin initials. So, since his name is 土屋（つちや）明彦（あきひこ）, the initials would be T.A.