Lady Sarashina's birth name is unknown, and she is called either Takasue's daughter or Lady Sarashina. Sarashina is a geographical district never mentioned in the diary, but it is alluded to, in a reference to Mount Obasute, also known as Mount Sarashina, in one of the book's poems (itself an adaptation of a more ancient poem). This, and the fact that her husband's last appointment was to the province of Shinano (Nagano), probably led to the use by later scholars of "Sarashina" as a point of identification of the text and its author.