Komatsu Hideko

Not to be confused with Komatsu Hideki.

Komatsu Hideko (小松 英子), née Ninomiya Hideko (born 1962) is a Nihon Ki-in professional Go player who reached 3-dan in 1993, 4-dan in 2010.

She was a pupil of Tsutsui Katsumi.

bugcat: The AGA-EJ (John Power) calls her Eiko. Is this in any way correct? Her Wikidata profile doesn't mention that name.

JohnF Unless she herself has changed her name, it's Hideko. John Power lives in Japan and so takes the usual Japanese approach to names - either guess at the most common reading or choose the most sinified version (he and I have chatted about names many times, incidentally). It's typical for schoolchildren to be misnamed by their teachers. On the whole, nobody cares about it much. Hideko's name is especially tricky because it can be read not just as Hideko, but also as Eiko, Eishi, Hanako, Fusako and Youko. Eiko is the commonest, followed closely by Hideko. There is a similar problem (though with a different kanji) with Sakata Eio. Many Japanese read Eio as Hideo, and Sakada is not uncommon (likewise Kidani for Kitani). Fujisawa Shuko as a "polite" but incorrect reading for Fujisawa Hideyuki is well known, especially because he, unusually, hated it, though he grudgingly learned to live with it (I have this from the horse's mouth). Among the oldies you get Genbi and Genmi, Sansa and Sansha, Honinbo and Honninbo and so on. You get odd cases such as Dosaku apparently being called Yamasaki but his descendants now use Yamazaki. Another notorious case is Kogishi Soji. The great historian Hayashi Yutaka put Ogishi Soji in one edition of his encyclopaedia and Kogishi in another. I asked Kogishi's only pupil, Masubichi Tatsuko, and she said it was Kogishi. But even that's no guarantee. Then there's Segoe Kensaku. Segoe is most often read Segoshi, and he had a passport in that name - but only because he let someone else do the paperwork for him. It's not even a Japanese thing. I have many times given my name to someone English as Fairbairn and they write down Fairchild, Fairweather, Fairburn etc right there in front of me. Japanese people write my name as フェアベーン. When I point out that the vowel in the first syllable is actually pronounced the same way as in the first, you can see their brains scrambling. Don't get hung up on this. Enjoy the variety. Be a words guy, not a numbers guy :)

bugcat: Thanks for this insightful reply!