I have this list of 愛称

> "My dearest Heart," "Dearest Mine," "my love," "my dear," "my darling," "my
> pet"

that I need to quote in my academic paper (the Japanese author is listing
possible pet names[1] that his Japanese friend could use to speak with his new
wife plus the ones he himself uses for his fiancée), but when I tried looking
up Japanese translations for them, I only found a few phrases repeatedly show
up as equivalents for English terms of endearment, but which don't seem to
differentiate between the English terms specifically or literally:

> 「いとしい人」、「親愛なる」、「愛しき人」、and「ねえ君」(this last one seems to be also applicable to
> people other than non-romantic partners)

Did the author have any Japanese equivalents in mind when he made this
suggestion? In Japanese, how can these 6 expressions be differentiated? I
especially don't know how to translate "heart" and "mine"
(「私のいとしい心」?「親愛なる私のもの」? 「私のもの」doesn't sound right to me, as if the speaker
thought of the wife as a possession).

* * *

[1] Source: Private letter, 宮部金吾
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translation nuances
How do you say terms of endearment (pet names) in Japanese?
I'm having difficulty understanding a part of your question, so I might be
missing your point, but in general you are not going to find 1:1 mapping
between phrases of any two languages. And the same goes to literal
translation; you just can't expect to take an expression like "dearest mine",
translate each word separately (deatest->親愛なる mine->私のもの) and expect that to
come out as a meaningful Japanese idiom. Languages just doesn't work like
that.

In English, possessive forms (like "my ..." and "mine") and sweet words
(honey, sweety, sweetheart, ...) are often used to show personal affections
and intimacy, but this is not the case in Japanese at all. In Japan, the way
you refer to someone implies a certain specific distance to that person.
Therefore, to show the intimacy & affection, you come up with a different name
to refer to that person to show that closeness.

Say the name of this other person is Natsuko Yamamoto. When I first meer her,
I might call her Yamamoto-san. The use of the last name and the suffix would
show that I maintain a proper distance (and respect) for her. If I'm a school
friend with her, I would start calling her Yama-chan (more informal suffix) or
Natsuko-san (first name is for more closer relationship.) If I'm a really good
friend with her, this might further change to, say, Nacchi.

And for the kind of relationship where one could say "my love", I'd come up
with another name altogether. Often it still has some sound of original name
left, like maybe Naah or Kocco, but it could also be completely unrelated
phonetically and come from some shared experience only she and I would know.
One usually keep this class of names secret from other people, and to do so,
they are not used in front of other people.

Anyway, the bottom line is that you will not find an easy translation of a
generic phrase "my love" in Japanese.
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answer