[quote=@Vertigo]
A-ha! Yeah, that's what I thought, one of those strange pronunciations used solely for names. And yeah, the athlete is most likely the football player I mentioned, Reo Mochizuki. 

Since 臣 means subject, not surprised it also meant slave, haha. But "top slave" sounds like even worse a meaning than "retainer of the summit"! But yeah, like she said, not everyone picks kanji for their meaning, or pay attention to what the kanji used for writing the name mean. For example, a friend of mine is called Minato (港 which means [i]harbour[/i]). I'm sure her parents didn't intend her to have meaningful future with harbours. With that said, some do pick based on the meaning, just like some of us here do. That's why compounds like 美 (mi = beautiful) are common.

Haha, I can explain what she meant by this (somewhat). Basically, kanji have On- and Kun-readings. The former is usually known as the "Chinese" reading, while the latter is the "Japanese" one - but both are used in Japanese. Usually, though not always, you would use the kun-reading when the word appears alone without other kanji to make up a word with it. In compound words comprising of multiple kanji, you would often use the On reading. 

Now, the kun pronounciation for 嶺 is "mine". So if you were to use that word alone to mean summit/top/etc. that's how you would say it. As for "shin", since 臣 seems to be mostly used in compound words, particularly ones for ministers (that I know of, I'm sure there are uses for it alone, like the old way to say slave that she mentioned) it is often read as "shin". For example, in 大臣 = prime minister.

I'm [i]not [/i]sure where Reo/Leo comes from exactly - or other new, name-only ways to pronounce kanji, like the Raito example I gave - if I'm entirely honest. My guess is that those are very, very old and archaic ways to pronounce the kanji, dug up solely to have a unique way to pronounce it in a name. Since that is basically what you can do when picking kanji for a name - you can choose [i]any [/i]possible pronunciation for it, no matter how little known. That's why it's impossible for Japanese people to know how to write each others' names upon hearing them, or infer any meaning. They can hazard a guess based on the most common kanji and meaning used for the name, but really, it could be written as anything, haha.

Japanese is fun.
[/quote]

Shit like this is why people think I'm absolutely stupid for learning Japanese. 

Can't say it isn't one hell of a ride though. [s]And it makes watching anime so much cooler.[/s]