I am going to a local 丼 restaurant in the future, and its name has me confused. First of all, its reading is こうのすけ, which uses two on’ and one kun’yomi reading. Secondly, it seems like nonsense. The only kind of translation I found was that apparently the founder of Panasonic had this surname with 幸 instead of 高, but thats the most coherent pull I can make. Is this a strange pun on a guy who made video tapes (the restaurant is kind of expensive so maybe?), is this a very obscure word that the Internet keeps hidden behind a pay wall? Do I need to go to the dark Web to find an explanation?
As you noted こうのすけ does seem to just be a name (it’s not that dude’s surname, that was Matsushita), though there’s way more than just the one guy. It’s just a given name, so you could use any variety of kanji to make it if you wanted.
But 之 is just the kanji form of の, and 助 is a common ending for restaurant names. Maybe someone knows why exactly that is. Perhaps the usage in given names and restaurant names is related.
