releasing this post from a strawpage into the wild after someone asked what Iād think boynobuās name would be a week or so ago:
let me talk about his given name in canon first (ćć®ć¶).
first, written in hiragana, shinobu's name intrinsically has no meaning. I see this as a literal lack of self, having no meaning because he hasn't figured out (or, is intentionally suppressing) his true, meaningful self. the verb version of it means "to endure", but I find it very meaningful that him enduring, canonically with the grief of kanae's death and/or living as a woman, is also hidden behind what seemingly is nothing at all. even his name is good at hiding who he is. the verb also can mean "recall", which could reflect him thinking about kanae a lot.
in addition, it's notable that EVERY major character aside from shinobu has their names in kanji. meanwhile, kanae (ć«ććØ), kanao (ć«ćć²), and aoi's (ć¢ćŖć¤) are all in katakana, all cohesively part of a group. this causes shinobu to be isolated, name-wise, to even the ones closest to him (we're going to ignore that the triplets' names are in hiragana because... yeah). this acts as a metaphor for him being different from the rest in yet another way with his identity, or the lack of it. he doesn't fit in, not with the hashira, and even with the girls he considers his sisters. he is the odd one out.
lastly, given names in hiragana are considered feminine rather than masculine, as it gives the name a sort of pretty and soft feeling. this is REALLY funny when it comes to boynobu, like the cherry on top of everything fucked up about him. you're telling me gotogue chose to make this unisex name be seen as feminine and not make me think they wanted shinobu to be read as transmasc? any possibility that his name could be read as masculine was curtailed by forcing it to be seen as feminine (which also represents his entire self becoming like kanae after she died). he didn't have a choice in the matter, as it was decided by his parents and his biology. kind of like how he had no control over his parents and sister dying LOLLLLLLL (coping rn).
now to the question you asked anon. I can see it happening both ways to be honest.
for the "shinobu keeps his name the same" path, he definitely changes it from hiragana to kanji. the most common kanji for this name is (åæ, endurance/patience/perseverance). maybe shinobu, unsure at first that he really should be doing this, would go for this. instead of seeing the negative aspects of those meanings, he sees the positive aspects, now that he has reclaimed the meaning that he has been blocked for his childhood from.
but there's different combinations of kanji that can be pronounced as shinobu, so boynobu has a lot to choose from. if he really wanted to be on the nose and yell out how much of a man he is, there's (äæ”夫, lit. belief, man). given his naming habits, he'd probably choose this. maybe.
then there's the 2nd way. as we know shinobu canonically sucks ass at naming things, which makes boynobu even more hilarious to me (this hc is a goldmine honestly. seriously how the hell is this not more popular?). I think there can be some very... interesting things happening here. we see in canon he likes to name things after fish, plants, or birds, as seen with kanao, his fish fugu, so...
a fun one that I'm thinking about is kajiki (ę¢¶ęØ, swordfish/marlin) because he has a pointy sword, and swordfish literally have a sword, and swordfish are really fast just like him, so like... duhhhh (according to what I believe is shinobu's naming sense. also apparently swordfish slash through schools of fish when they hunt more often than piercing through them. so maybe it does fit, as maybe shinobu is projecting his insecurities here?).
if someone snapped some sense to him into giving himself a more... better name (aoi perhaps because she was there to witness the awful proposals for kanao), again just like with the kanji, there's a lot to choose from. I know there's the whole thing some trans people have with how new names don't sound similar to their deadnames, but I think for clarity's sake meta-wise so we don't get confused, and that shinobu would want to make it easy for his loved ones, he would make it sound similar.
personally I see him using shinichi, since it starts with "shi-", has the 3 syllables like with shinobu, and the "-ichi" ending, which is often found in male names, which gave him some gendered relief perhaps. lot of good kanji variations like (ēäø, true), (é²äø, progress), (ę°äø, new), (ęäø, advance), and (ē“³äø, gentleman LOLLL).
I'm sure there's like way more interesting names and kanji combinations that could be out there, there's really so much you could do with this
