Kenshin's real name is Shinta. His parent died when he was little of cholera. So he became an orphan and was bought by some slave traders. One night while the slave traders were busy, some kind of gang attacked and three women tried to protect Shinta. But everyone was killed. Hiko found Shinta and started to train him but, later on, when he found out that Shinta was a very powerful swordsman, and after he found out that three women tried to save him, Hiko thought that Shinta was too sweet of a name for a swordsman and so he gave him the name Himura Kenshin or in English Kenshin Himura.
After Kenshin turned 14, he decided to leave the dojo and go out on his own. He decided that he should enter into the battle at the end of the Tokugawa Shohunate Era. The side he joined on was the side to End the era and to start a new. By the way, Kenshin had no samurai blood at all in him but he was a hired assassin. He had a count fo 100 killed men within 6 months time. From here he became known as the Hitori Battousai. He fell in love with a young woman named Tomoe, but a year before, he was on a mission to kill a body guard and on this mission he recieved his first scar. The cut had a hard time healing and it took a while before it stopped bleeding. About a year after he recieved his first scar, Tomoe and Kenshin hid as husband and wife as farmers, but all of this hiding shortly ended, just when Kenshin was falling in love with Tomoe. A trator of some sort turned Kenshin and Tomoe in and Kenshin had to go back into battle. When the enemy attacked, Tomoe thought that Kenshin would miss the enemy and get killed, so she jumped in front of Kenshin's attack and was cut or hurt. Just before Tomoe died, she took the dagger and made the second mark on Kenshin's cheek and it made a cross-shaped scar that looks like an "X".