It's a win for nominative determinism. The name Shimon, in Japanese, directly translates to something like "Determined Scholar."
It's also a fairly weird and old fashioned name. The sort of thing that would have been in style 120 years ago. (Meiji and early Taisho era.) Japanese names today are usually less literal.
His name could be interpreted as "aspiring to be a scholar". I guess he's done an exceptional job living up to it.