I became interested in Kyan Chotoku's name again after reading your e-mail concerning its pronunciation in Japan. It was something I had often been curious about but never got around to researching. Since I'd only seen his name in print in English articles as usually Chotoku Kyan or his nickname Chan Migwa, I had no way of knowing if 'Chan' and 'Kyan' were actually the same word, that is, two alternative pronunciations or readings of the same name written with the same kanji. However, seeing the nickname occasionally written as 'Migwa Chan' lead me to believe it mightn't be the same word at all...
As you know, there are many special titles for high-ranking personages such as Shihan, Kyoshi, etc., and there are many more everyday titles like Sensei (used for teachers, doctors [like my friend Cho Sensei] or, curiously enough, lawyers!) and of course San, which means Mr, Miss or Mrs. It seems the Japanese actually went one step better towards equality than the western 'Ms' with a completely gender-free title for everyone!
Anyway, you might know that there is also a kind of 'pet title' used for children, youthful actresses, pop stars etc.: "chan". Presumably it is supposed to be a 'cute' version of 'san'. For example, the Minnie Mouse character is referred to as "Minnie chan", and a child might refer to a cat as "neko-chan".
This 'Chan', like all other titles, always goes at the end of a name (recall the way that Mr Miyagi famously called his protege Daniel-san, never San Daniel!)
Therefore I had suspected it possible that 'Migwa-chan' was one such jokey nickname, and that it had been automatically reversed to 'Chan Migwa' by a translator (in the same way that Funakoshi Gichin's name becomes Gichin Funakoshi in the west, etc.) who mistakenly thought it was his actual name?
Rather than simply relying on English text, with the same old romanizations of the name, I decided to check out wikipedia's Japanese site, and I found out some very interesting things.
You remember how in my last e-mail I mentioned that a Japanese colleague was sure the name was pronounced "Kiyan"? Well, of course I am aware that wikipedia is hardly the ultimate authority on everything. Nevertheless, it appears my friend may have been mistaken. It is actually an easy mistake to make, even for a native Japanese, as can be seen in my attachment "kyanA.jpg".
When a hiragana character is written a little smaller than the preceding character (how small depends largely on the font or handwriting) it modifies the sound of the preceding character while keeping it as one syllable (as is the case for "kya"), as opposed to being written at normal size where it will be a separate second syllable (as is the case with "ki-ya").
The "ya" hiragana is evidently small on the wikipedia page (see "kyanB.jpg"), therefore, at least according to wikipedia, the name is pronounced "Kyan", not "Kiyan".
The other interesting discovery was that the Kanji for the surname "Kyan" in the article title, and the kanji for "Chan" in his nickname are exactly the same, so my theory of the diminutive "-chan" was wrong.
The reason the pronunciation of the nickname is written in katakana rather than hiragana indicates that it is not Japanese pronunciation. This is obvious to me because the kanji for "Mi" and "Gwa" mean "eyes" and "small" respectively (both first grade kanji!), which would normally be pronounced something like "Mesho" in Japanese. Therefore "Chan Migwa" is most likely informal 'Uchinaguchi' (Okinawan language).
However, my Japanese friends assure me that "Kyan" is also a highly unusual reading of the three kanji making up his surname in Japanese, so it seems it must be formal native Okinawan. Perhaps it is written in hiragana because it is a proper noun, and understandably he would have pronounced his own name the same way wherever he went: "Kyan Chotoku".
As a sidenote, Dr Clayton brought my attention to a book by Master Kanazawa, recently published in English, which uses the word "Kiyatake" instead of "Kyan".
It is true that the kanji making up "Kyan" could be read any number of ways using combinations of Japanese 'kun' and 'on' readings, including "Kiyamu", "Yokoroyamu" or indeed "Kiyatake". If a Japanese person with no knowledge of the original Okinawan pronunciation read the kanji of his name they would indeed guess it was something like one of the above combinations. However, I have never read or heard any of these combinations in use before.
There is a remote possibility that Master Kanazawa himself only ever read the kanji in print and presumed the reading to be "Kiyatake". However, as he is a karate master I find it very hard to believe that he never heard Kyan's name spoken aloud, or at the very least read a (kana) phonetic guide of the correct pronunciation somewhere over the years.
Assuming that this is an English translation of a book Master Kanazawa's actually wrote in Japanese, I have a theory which might explain its use therein. I suspect that Kanazawa is well aware of the correct Okinawan pronunciation of Kyan's name, but he simply wrote it in its kanji form in the Japanese manuscript, and it was a Japanese translator of the book who was unaware of the original Okinawan and transcribed it with a Japanese reading, "Kiyatake".
I feel this is an entirely plausible explanation. Suppose you or I wrote a book which proved to be very popular and our publisher informed us that it was to be published in Portuguese. I can't imagine we would sit down with an English-Portuguese dictionary and check through every word with a fine-toothed comb. Most writers would pretty much trust the translator to have done a good job. I guess such is the price of worldwide popularity: inevitably certain parts will get lost in the translation - which is clearly true in the world of martial arts. Unfortunately, this latest mistranslation simply adds to the growing obfuscation. Which is why no-nonsense books like Shotokan's Secret are a godsend to martial artists!
An alternative explanation to the above is that Master Kanazawa wrote the English version of the book himself, and intentionally chose an unorthodox reading of a famous karateka's name to deliberately create confusion, but personally I find this explanation the hardest to swallow of all.
Bottom line: there are any number of ways to "read" the kanji of his name in Japanese, just as there would be any number of (completely different) - ways to "read" the same kanji in Chinese, but none of these matter. If the serious karateka wishes to mention this karate master using the correct original pronunciation, that is, the way he would have pronounced his own name himself, the Okinawan is "Kyan Chotoku".
So, in this instance at least, it appears western romanization was right all along.
) that is used all over China and adjacent countries. 
KI joyful (3p9.1)
ya house (3r6.3)
MU military (4n5.3)