(05-09-2016, 12:33 PM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote: OK, so those are all proper kanji, but the readings don't really mash together like that in practice.Thank you very, very much for your help today, for helping me with a name and giving me an impromptu lesson on kanji!
Likely though, as Virella said, nobody's really going to notice unless they're being nitpicky and have the knowledge/tools to deconstruct the name.
The way you've put them together though, it looks more like Blade/Sword Shadow as opposed to the other way around.
For something like "Shadow Blade" you could use something like Kageha, which is written 影刃 (literally shadow-blade) and Kageken, which is written 影剣.
Japanese kanji are weird because when a compound work is made, it often will make use of the Chinese reading instead of the Japanese reading a lot of the time. It's why you get -ha and -ken instead of the full Japanese word.
