Japanese Names

I had a few questions regarding Japanese names that I feel the enlightened frequenters of this forum could probably answer for me:

1. Most Japanese names are made from combinations of characters, are there rules governing which characters can and cannot be combined?

2. The Chinese have a concept of style names, derived from the characters making up one's name, sort of a trope on the name itself. Is this done in Japan?

3. Is there a way to tell which names make sense as surnames and which names make sense as given names?

I thank you in advance for helping me out with these questions.

hmm...hard to say...dunno of such rules..instinct, maybe? like the name sakura, it can be both name and surname. so...instinct.

I also find it hard to create suitable "Japanese" names. I had trouble thinking of names for my soon-to-be manga (It's in a written novel for now xD). But I kinda' feel like as if Surnames have more or equal number of syllables to that of given names, that's what I observed, but not sure though... example: Uzumaki Naruto, Kouyama Mitsuki, Tsukamoto Tenma, Sawachika Eri, Kyoshiro Todou... etc.


So I went by that format :lol: But still I have problems with it. Like how the name is pronounced out loud, and they don't feel right even if they are two popular names, like when both names end with the same pronunciation like: surname ends with -na; and given name ends with -na. Is that bad?

Come to think of it, I wonder if the names I gave my characters make any sense now that you mention question no.3 :(

Style names are a really cool concept, but none of the people I know seem to know whether this exists in Japan as well as China.

As for the other questions, it's possible that there are no rules, but rather native speakers just have a feel for it. That's how it is in English. I could tell which name syllables make sense together and which names are surnames, given names, or both, but I don't think I can really say why. Of course, English is a much less pure language than Japanese, so it's possible the Japanese have a functional and extant system. English certainly did at one point.

from what i've learned so far,there are no written rules regarding names,it's just that there's some kind of an unspoken rule behind the naming system:japanese names tends to have a connection with nature and good virtues.

for example:

野原(nohara,means a grassland)
小池(koike,means small pond)
森山(moriyama,forested mountain)

and many more.
i have ways to go before i can explain the secrets behind the naming system,maybe Raze could explain it better to you.

hey, you got it wrong there. for toudou kyoushirou, toudou is the name, and kyoushirou is the name. but well....i guess there's really a 'feel' to the names. i can tell instantly which one is the name and which is surname, but still i can't tell if there is any rule at all...b

Tōdō (Surname) Kyōshirō (Name)

oh, forgot the 'sur'. geez.

Another name related thought: Does Japan have an index of acceptable names?

Some countries, like France, do, and these names constitute the only legal names for children. The US on the other hand, lets you name your child almost anything, though numbers, fighting words, and anything else not protected by free speech is out.

Seriously? That seems . . . odd.

Then again, maybe the US should have something like that. I'm tired of kids with stupid fucking names. Mostly it's celebrities doing it, but there is occasionally the bumfuck who decides to name their child something horrible.

Though this is a bit off topic, but I think France has a good idea there. It's not just the US though, did you remember the story about the Kiwi couple that wanted to name their son 4-ever, yeah that's what they wanted to name him. They couldn't, so they settled on Superman, that poor boy. No better than another Kiwi family naming their child (at least I think they are kiwis) Tulula does the hula from hawai, yes that is the girl's name. Also you have people named Asshole (Aa shol lay) Shithead (She tay) and apparently you have an Abcde somewhere in the US. Apparently there is also a Pilot navigator around the US too, bloody celebrity idiots. I hope those kids grow up and change their names just to piss their parents off and also so they won't get laughed at.

You may be thinking of Jason Lee's son, Pilot Inspektor Riesgraf Lee.

I really like Lee as an actor, and as a person he seems cool, but I can't forgive something that stupid. The kid's already going to have problems being the son of a famous actor, why saddle him with more burdens by naming him Pilot Inspektor?

To hopefully get this back on track a little, can anyone explain the phenomenon of naming kids after objects in Japan? I understand it's a bit different from a couple in America naming their daughter Apple, but is it a common practice, or just something seen in anime for plot purposes and characterizations? Such as Ichigo from Bleach (ichigo being the word for strawberry) and Sakura from Naruto and tons of other series (sakura being the word for cherry blossom), is it only something that seems weird if a person translated the names as what they mean? If in the American release of Bleach, the main character was a guy named Strawberry, that'd be weird, but is a person named Ichigo not weird in Japan?

I think we do that in English too. However, because English was influenced by so many other languages as it developed, most of the meanings are not something we can easily recognize with just modern English.

For example, the common name Peter means rock or stone.

Cephas -> Petrus -> Peter(a few stages in its development)

or for a "lost" instance, the name Notker meant "spear"(this is actually a germanic name as well)

We also name our children after virtues. Faith, Hope, and Charity remain usable names today, and the other 7 virtues were used in names commonly by the American Puritans. Many of our other names also derive from virtues or virtuous abstract ideas.

Of course, many of these names come from non-english/germanic sources(especially the myriad of biblical names), but of the ones that do come from germanic origins, virtues, objects, and occupations are the most common name themes.

Compared to English, Japanese was much less influenced by other languages, and so I think the reason it is so striking is that their names simply remain more readable with respect to their original meanings.

I'm shamelessly abusing this thread for my own question now. I don't possess the slightest knowledge about japanese, so my question may sound kind of stupid - sorry about that - but my problem is that I can't quite grasp the logic behind this matter, which annoys me. What I know of the japanese way of writing names now is that they're written and pronounced completely different.

*Pulls out a random example*


Which doesn't make any sense to me at all. If you're writing the name completely different as to how it's pronounced, and now my question, how are you actually supposed to know how to read, or pronounce, the name? You can hardly smell it on the paper or something, so... how? Please, someone explain that to me. Do you run around in japan and everytime you're asked for your name you need to give a full explanation on the kanjis, or what the hell? I've seen several cases in japanese media where the reading of names have been made into jokes, so this example can't be a special case either. I guess there has to be some kind of different way to read names, how does that work?

Regarding stupid names, I've never seen such a case with german names. We're all for stupid surnames, which can be a bitch with wrong interpretation. My own surname could be interpreted into 'River consisting of horses'. I've once seen a surname which could be read as 'Molester of women'. I'd choose being called Strawberry over that, or for short 'Straw' which sounds similar to... RAW! *Flexing muscles*

I've never heard any method to actually know what it is pronounced. I've read it in a book the simple way is just ask the person for his/her name. Or maybe ask a business card or something. Using Kanji as names is a bit hard, cause even of you have the same kanji in your name, it doesn't mean the pronunciation is the same.

In my case I really rely on the small hiragana letters on top of the kanji.

Well, I read something about Japanese surnames once. So I googled it and here it is.

Japanese Surnames--Japan Reference

Err with the Ichigo thing (from wiki): Ichigo's name, written with homophone kanji, means 1 and 5 when separated as ichi (一) and go (五), the reason behind the two numbers' frequent appearances in the series, notably on the sampler hanging on his bedroom door. The word ichigo (苺／イチゴ), written in yet another way, means "strawberry" —one of his nicknames— in Japanese, and is normally only used as a girl's name; when teased about this fact, Ichigo proudly counters that his name is spelled with ichi (一) as in "first" and go (è­·) from "guardian". Ichigo's father once told him that his name means "he who protects." The name also means 'one's lifetime.'[16] Ichigo's name is written like this 一護 so it doesn't mean the strawberry.

Also this article might help a bit Japanese Names on Wikipedia