To: Someone who understands Japanese re: Light's name
Okay, I've been putting forth an admittedly small effort in learning Japanese over the last couple of years and there's just some principle of kanji that I'm just not able to wrap my head around, and Light's name is a perfect example.
I understand that family name of Yagami is composed of the characters 夜 (ya/yoru) meaning night and 神 (kami) meaning god, and I understand how putting those two characters together ends up reading as Yagami - that one isn't too hard. But the character that Light uses for his first name is 月 (tsuki) meaning month or moon. I'm simply baffled on why when you put 夜神 along with 月 that the reading becomes Light instead of Moon. I remember that Misa initially thought that Light's name was Moon until she saw him in person and discovered his family name. So why does the reading change when you put the two together? I've read certain explanations for this and I've never been able to wrap my head around it, so could someone please explain it to me in the simplest way possible?