I've been playing maimai, the Japanese arcade rhythm game for a while. It offers a song named 天火明命, which a few of my friends pronounce as 'ten-ka-mei-mei'.
However, the official Twitter account of the game specifies it as 'a-me-no-ho-a-ka-ri' (あめのほあかり), which confuses me.
So what's the right way to pronounce the name? Is the "official" pronunciation simply the author's preference, or has actually been used in the past?
天火明命 is the name of a god in ancient Japanese mythology. 天 = あめ, 火 = ほ, 明 = あかり. (の is a particle; 命 (みこと) is a kind of suffix for deities.) See this Wikipedia article for details.
The kanji of god names in Japanese mythology are generally based on kun-yomi, ateji or jukujikun, because they existed before Japanese people learned kanji and their on-yomi from China. See also: Why is "Yamata no Orochi" written in katakana?
