I need to write the names 小此木憲次 (the adopted son of 宮部金吾） and 森廣 (a leader of 札幌独立キリスト教会) in ローマ字 in an academic paper. What is the correct 読み方 for 小此木 and for 廣?
I tried kanji.reader.bz but it did not find any results. Through a Google search I found that 小此内 is read as こがうち and that 小此之本 is read as おこのぎ.
When I tried searching for 廣 in online dictionaries, I was taken to the entry for 広い.
Thank you for your help!
As a general principle, you can't be fully confident about the reading of a Japanese personal name until you ask themselves or their family (like in English, too, where we have "hue-ston" Houstons and "house-ton" Houstons, for example).
Talking about possibilities, 小此木 may be read as おこのぎ, おこのき, おこぎ, おこき, おひき, おびき, ここき, ここのぎ, こごれき, ここぎ, このき, こひき, こびき, こひぎ, こしき, こしぎ according the link, but I've personally only heard of おこのぎ or ここのぎ.
For your second person, it seems that 森 is his surname and 廣 is the given name. The one letter 廣 as a given name is most likely to be pronounced as ひろし, but I can't deny the possibility of こう.
PS
小此之本 in your Yahoo! Ask link is probably a mistype or misunderstanding by the poster for 小此之木.
I had a look on kotobank :
Apparently 2 persons are recorded as being named 小此木
So オコノギ (Okonogi) seems like a likely pronunciation for this name.
According to this website 森廣 is pronounced モリヒロ (Morihiro) and is worn by about 400 persons, which makes it quite rare. There also seems to be a few facebook profiles lying around here with this spelling and Morihiro as pronunciation.
