Wtfff

Realest comment!!!!

So, I googled your question, apparently changing names was very common for men in feudal Japan, especially for samurai. Basically they believed that when a baby is born they have a "youth name" and when they come of age they are given an "adult name". For samurai, they often received a name given by their lord/patron, some going as far as receiving new family names (of course this involved politics, being named by someone important could be the symbol of forming an alliance, and someone from a despised/unimportant clan was more likely to take on a new surname to shed the reputation). So it wasn't weird for samurai to have 2 or 3 names (Tokugawa Ieyasu had like 4, his childhood one, 2 from his patron bc he didn't like the first one and changed one character to match his family's traditional names, and one more after his patron died, to symbolize he was independent). My guess is that Naritoshi is Mori Ranmaru's (the historical figure) childhood name, and he received his adult name from Nobunaga upon becoming his retainer, but in the manga when Nobunaga met our Ranmaru he ended up giving him the name instead (it makes more sense why he felt so entitled to give Ranmaru a name back then now, since he was taking him in)

Oooh so in a sense our Ranmaru isn’t actually the historical one but kind of replaced him and took his name before the actual ranmaru showed up??? Since Naritoshi is the one who was supposed to be Ranmaru but instead his whole historical position is now our mc’s??? That’s what im getting. This is so interesting to think about.

That's what I'm thinking too, but since historical fictions often change things up, we'll have to wait and see