Nobunaga’s poor sons stuck with their weird childhood names permanently
A brief explanation: For a large part of the feudal Japanese time periods, it’s not proper to say someone’s personal name (e.g “Nobunaga”, “Hideyoshi”, “Ieyasu”) except for specific allowances. People would often have an “alias” (kemyou 仮名) that they receive on their genpuku (coming of age ceremony) alongside their adult names that they can go by instead of their personal names.
This is what you sometimes see being written as someone’s “middle name”. For example, Nobunaga’s kemyou was Saburou, and so you might see his “full” name being written as “Oda Saburou Nobunaga”.
When someone has an official title, people can also use their title in place of the kemyou. For example, Nobunaga was a “Kazusa no Suke” once, so he can be referred to or addressed as “Oda Kazusa no Suke”.
When someone does not have a kemyou, their childhood names were used in its place. I have yet to find the details of the rules and formalities for giving someone a kemyou for their genpuku, but either way: Nobunaga’s eldest son Nobutada had a kemyou, which is “Kankurou”, but his younger brothers apparently do not.
Knowing Nobunaga’s tendency to name his sons very strange names, this means that the young lords were unfortunately stuck with those names in many documentations even after their coming of age ceremonies. For example, various texts still refer to Oda Nobukatsu as “Ochasen-dono/Ochasen-sama” (his childhood name being Chasenmaru, which means “tea whisk”) even after Honnouji.
Oda Nobutaka, too, was still referred to as “Sanshichi” in the various accounts dating long after his genpuku.
In Nobutaka’s case, I have seen some opinion saying that “Sanshichi” was not actually his childhood name, but indeed his kemyou. This opinion claims that Sanshichi is a shortened form of “Sanshichirou”, and that this is a kemyou, while it’s his childhood name that was unknown.
This opinion has merit, as there were other people with alternative names that are not entirely clear whether its a kemyou or a childhood name. For example, Takeda Shingen once was known to go by “Tarou”. It’s still unclear whether this is a childhood name or a kemyou.
It’s just an opinion or theory, though, and for the most part “Sanshichi” is still considered to be Nobutaka’s childhood name.
To be fair, it wasn’t all that bad, because they do also get referred to by their titles or their personal names (in the appropriate occasions). Not to mention that maybe, even if those names sounds weird to us, it’s actually not weird at all in the Sengoku. However, I am a modern person reading this in the modern day, so I cannot help but feel bad because those funny childhood names just looks silly in formal documentations.
