So 白鳥 reading is はくちょう and it means “swan”, right?
But in 白鳥沢学園高校, it reads as しらとり and it means “white eagle”.
Question is how to get when it means what and when use on onyomi or kunyomi?
The word しらとり doesn’t specifically mean “white eagle” generally speaking. It just means “white bird.” You’re talking about a fictional school that was named by an author, right? Names of people, places, and whatnot are special cases that offer a lot of room for creativity.
When reading the name of something the first time, you really can’t make too many assumptions. You an make an educated guess, but there will be creative and rare names all over. Two people or things with identical kanji orthography can be read in different ways.
The word はくちょう is a common and standard word. しらとり seems like it would be a poetic word if used outside of a name context.
For the meaning, I refer you to what @Leebo said. しらとり is really a very general word. Based on the order of definitions in 大辞林, it seems like the most common meanings of each (since they come first for each reading) are
しらとり: white bird
はくちょう: swan/cygnet
even though each of them can mean the other thing as well.
In this particular case, I would make a guess at it being kun’yomi because of the use of 沢, which is quite a common character in Japanese names. はくちょうたく is of course possible, but I think it’s a much rarer reading for a name. However, well, it really depends on the choice of the author, and it’s not rare for such names to be given furigana in novels precisely so readers know what the author decided to name something.
Em. pha. sis.
Reading Harry Potter, I see. 
Ok, I thought it might be, thanks 
Yes, I was inspired by the book group so I’m contemplating catching up. Unfortunately the Kindle e-reader for Android seems to have a really unhelpful dictionary, to the point that it can’t de-conjugate verbs and just says they don’t exist!
Are borrow words more informal than a word of Japanese origin? I have always assumed so
Or maybe this is a grammar question? But im not asking about a specific grammat point so i gusss its ok
It depends on the word. Many loanwords only appear in business or political situations. They might be “difficult” English (or other languages) words that have relatively common Japanese equivalents. That doesn’t necessarily make them “more formal” but they are certainly not words you would expect normal Japanese folks to put into their everyday conversations.
For instance, something like マイノリティー (少数) or オマージュ (尊敬).
For a Japanese person to toss these into a regular conversation, they run the risk of being thought of as pretentious, if they are understood at all. No such risk exists with the Japanese versions.
Ramen can be written in kanji as 拉麺, but both of those kanji are either not so common (拉) or a bit of a pain to write (麺). The word comes from Chinese, and Japanese people know that it’s not something that is originally Japanese, though not explicitly because of how its written.
There are a variety of ways ramen might get written in Japanese, and while yes, katakana is a common one to see, you also see らーめん a fair deal as well.
Not all things written in katakana are foreign words, either. Things like キミ or キレイ are commonly seen in katakana, “just because” and not for any deep reason. Animals is another category of words that often get written in katakana, unless they are ones with very basic kanji people learn in elementary school.
@Leebo and @Jonapedia have you covered, but I did want to mention that in the show/manga, it’s Ushijima specifically that’s referred to as the “mighty white eagle” rather than the school itself.
@Leebo, @Jonapedia, @alo very much appreciate your thoughtful replies.
My random midnight question is now solved
Would you consider research and investigation as synonyms? They basically mean the same to me and i have so many leeches because i mix up the two. For example 究明 and 研究
I would try to avoid making them synonyms just to practice nuance. Think of it this way: a scientist would do research, while a detective would do an investigation. 究明 is a bit strange, but it’s more of an academic word for gathering systematic information than a detective’s investigation (think of the third example sentence with the college class example).
Does that even help? I feel like that might not have helped, sorry 
Yes it does! Part of the reason I have not added the synonyms thus far is because of the nuance. Still i hate these leeches
One way I remember this is because it’s how Professor Oak describes his research in the Pokémon games. The オ—キド研究所 is the Oak Research Center.
So it’s more along the lines of research as a study of something and quite often used in naming places like this.
This is really just a question for my curiosity and trivia, but is there anyone who knows enough about boxing and Japanese boxing terms that they could possibly answer this question?
I’m reading City Hunter and I came across this sentence:
やっと指名試合でタイトルマッチの権利をえたからってはりきりすぎよ
I understand the jist of the sentence since the story is about the boxer recovering from a really bad injury and now has finally earned his chance to challenge the champion in a title fight, but I’m more curious about the use of the words 指名試合 and タイトルマッチ in the sentence.
So if I look up both of these words in a J-E dictionary they are both translated as ‘title match.’ So I tried to look up Japanese sources for info on 指名試合 and it didn’t really help because, again, reading something like Japanese Wikipedia article there seems to be a basic amount of boxing knowledge you need to know to decipher it. Now what was interesting is that if I search for タイトルマッチ on Japanese wikipedia it then redirects to the article 選手権 (championship/a title).
Now this is where someone knowing something about boxing would help because in reading the wikipedia article on 指名試合 there this sentence I came across near the top:
なお、指名試合に対し、通常のタイトルマッチは王者に挑戦者の選択権が認められることから選択試合と呼ばれる。
where it seems to be contrasting 通常のタイトルマッチ and 選択試合. So does this mean that 指名試合 is just one type of ‘タイトルマッチ’ where the champion is required to fight the challenger in contrast to the notion of the 選択試合 where the champion is allowed to choose their own challenger?
Sorry, if this isn’t a ‘short’ question as I didn’t know if making a whole new thread about this was warranted. Also, if no one really knows it’s not a big deal as it’s just a single bubble in the set up to the story and isn’t really super important in the end as I still understand what is being talked about having previous read the story in English and having seen the anime episode multiple times. As I said at the start, it’s really just more my curiosity about nuance of these boxing jargon words.
Thanks!
I looked in a monolingual dictionary and it looks like a 指名試合 is a specific type of title match where the challenger calls out the champion and challenges him to a match. In the wikipedia article you quoted, it points out that in a regular title match, the challenger must first win a preliminary/semifinal match to be qualified to fight the champion. Hope that helps. I’m not a boxing expert either so if anyone has any more detailed understanding feel free to jump in.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks. My biggest problem was trying to map some of the terminology used in the Japanese wikipedia page to a similar source in English. The biggest problem is some of the more literal translations of the Japanese language used don’t always 1:1 map to that which is used in English so it was making it a bit more difficult to decipher. I was trying to find a similar type pages to these:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200128173814/http://www.jekai.org/entries/aa/00/np/aa00np53.htm
but for boxing but was having no real luck.
Some day I’m going to try to read Hajime no Ippo in Japanese, but it seems I may have quite a bit of additional studying to do just to make sure I can understand all the boxing jargon that it inevitably uses.
Yeah it can be tough!
For compound words like this, it can sometimes help to look up the individual components. 指名 means calling on or requesting which could help you figure it out. Sometimes jargon is just jargon though.
Im thinking when I hit 60 i will start learning to write Kanji. Otherwise i can’t see myself ever retaining all of them. Do you think its ok to wait or would I be better starting sooner rather than later?