Japanese names

in modern times consist of a family name (surname) followed by a given name, in that order. Nevertheless, when a Japanese name is written in the Roman alphabet, ever since the Meiji era, the official policy has been to cater to Western expectations and reverse the order. , the government has stated its intention to change this policy. Japanese names are usually written in kanji, which are characters mostly Chinese in origin but Japanese in pronunciation. The pronunciation of Japanese kanji in names follows a special set of rules, though parents are able to choose pronunciations; many foreigners find it difficult to read kanji names because of parents being able to choose which pronunciations they want for certain kanji, though most pronunciations chosen are common when used in names. Some kanji are banned for use in names, such as the kanji for "weak" and "failure", amongst others.

Parents also have the option of using hiragana or katakana when giving a name to their newborn child. Names written in hiragana or katakana are phonetic renderings, and so lack the visual meaning of names expressed in the logographic kanji.

According to estimates, there are over 300,000 different surnames in use today in Japan. The three most common family names in Japan are , , and . People in Japan began using surnames during the Muromachi period. Japanese peasants had surnames in the Edo period; however, they could not use them in public.

While family names follow relatively consistent rules, given names are much more diverse in pronunciation and characters. While many common names can easily be spelled or pronounced, many parents choose names with unusual characters or pronunciations, and such names cannot in general be spelled or pronounced unless both the spelling and pronunciation are given. Unusual pronunciations have especially become common, with this trend having increased significantly since the 1990s. For example, the popular masculine name is traditionally pronounced "Hiroto", but in recent years alternative pronunciations "Haruto", " Yamato", "Taiga", "Sora", "Taito", "Daito", and "Masato" have all entered use.

Male names often end in , but also (e.g. "Ichirō"); (e.g. "Kenta") or (e.g. "Teruo" or "Akio"), or contain (e.g. " Ken'ichi"), (also written with , along with several other possible characters; e.g. " Kazuhiro"), (e.g. " Jirō"), or (e.g. " Daichi").

Female names often end in (e.g. " Keiko") or (e.g. "Yumi"). Other popular endings for female names include or (e.g. " Reika") and (e.g. " Haruna").

Structure

The majority of Japanese people have one surname and one given name, except for the Japanese imperial family, whose members have no surname. The family name – , or – precedes the given name, called the or . The given name may be referred to as the "lower name" because, in vertically written Japanese, the given name appears under the family name. People with mixed Japanese and foreign parentage may have middle names.Power, p. C4-2.

Historically, , and had different meanings. was originally the patrilineal surname which was granted by the emperor as a title of male rank. There were relatively few , and most of the medieval noble clans trace their lineage either directly to these or to the courtiers of these . was another name used to designate patrilineal descent, but later merged with around the same time. was, simply, what a family chooses to call itself, as opposed to the granted by the emperor. While it was passed on patrilineally in male ancestors including in male ancestors called haku (uncles), one had a certain degree of freedom in changing one's . See also .

A single name-forming element, such as can be written by more than one kanji (, , or ). Conversely, a particular kanji can have multiple meanings and pronunciations. In some names, Japanese characters phonetically "spell" a name and have no intended meaning behind them. Many Japanese personal names use puns.Hanks, Patrick, Kate Hardcastle, and Flavia Hodges. ''A Dictionary of First Names''. Oxford University Press, 2006
Appendix 8: Japanese Names
Retrieved from Google Books on April 1, 2012. , .

Very few names can be surnames and given names (for example , , , or . Therefore, to those familiar with Japanese names, which name is the surname and which is the given name is usually apparent, no matter which order the names are presented in. This thus makes it unlikely that the two names will be confused, for example, when writing in English while using the family name-given name naming order. However, due to the variety of pronunciations and differences in languages, some common surnames and given names may coincide when Romanized: e.g., (given name) and (surname).

Although usually written in kanji, Japanese names have distinct differences from Chinese names through the selection of characters in a name and the pronunciation of them. A Japanese person can distinguish a Japanese name from a Chinese name. Akie Tomozawa said that this was equivalent to how "Europeans can easily tell that the name 'Smith' is English and 'Schmidt' is German or 'Victor' is English or French and 'Vittorio' is Italian".

Characters

Japanese names are usually written in kanji (Chinese characters), although some names use hiragana or even katakana, or a mixture of kanji and kana. While most "traditional" names use (native Japanese) kanji readings, a large number of given names and surnames use (Chinese-based) kanji readings as well. Many others use readings which are only used in names (), such as the female name . The majority of surnames comprise one, two or three kanji characters. There are also a small number of four or five kanji surnames, such as , and , but these are extremely rare. The sound , indicating possession (like the Saxon genitive in English), and corresponding to the character , is often included in names but not written as a separate character, as in the common name , or historical figures such as Sen no Rikyū.

Most personal names use one, two, or three kanji. Four-syllable given names are common, especially in eldest sons.Hakes, Molly. ''The Everything Conversational Japanese Book: Basic Instruction For Speaking This Fascinating Language In Any Setting''. Everything Books, 2004
122
Retrieved from Google Books on August 8, 2011. , .

As mentioned above, female given names often end in the syllable , written with the kanji meaning , or , written with the kanji meaning .Hakes, Molly. ''The Everything Conversational Japanese Book: Basic Instruction For Speaking This Fascinating Language In Any Setting''. Everything Books, 2004
121
Retrieved from Google Books on August 8, 2011. , .

The usage of has changed significantly over the years: prior to the Meiji Restoration (1868), it was reserved for members of the imperial family. Following the restoration, it became popular and was overwhelmingly common in the Taishō and early Shōwa era. The suffix increased in popularity after the mid-20th century. Around the year 2006, due to the citizenry mimicking naming habits of popular entertainers, the suffix was declining in popularity. At the same time, names of western origin, written in kana, were becoming increasingly popular for naming of girls. By 2004 there was a trend of using hiragana instead of kanji in naming girls. Molly Hakes said that this may have to do with using hiragana out of cultural pride, since hiragana is Japan's indigenous writing form, or out of not assigning a meaning to a girl's name so that others do not have a particular expectation of her.

Names ending with dropped significantly in popularity in the mid-1980s, but are still given, though much less than in the past. Male names occasionally end with the syllable as in Mako, but very rarely using the kanji (most often, if a male name ends in , it ends in , using the kanji meaning "boy"). Common male name endings are and ; names ending with are often adjectives, e.g., Atsushi, which might mean, for example, "(to be) faithful." In the past (before World War II), names written with katakana were common for women, but this trend seems to have lost favour. Hiragana names for women are not unusual. Kana names for boys, particularly those written in hiragana, have historically been very rare. This may be in part because the hiragana script is seen as feminine; in medieval Japan, women generally were not taught kanji and wrote exclusively in hiragana.

In Japanese, words, and thus names, do not begin with the Syllabic consonant ; this is in common with other proper Japanese words, though colloquial words may begin with , as in (variant of . Some names end in : the male names Ken, Shin, and Jun are examples. The syllable should not be confused with the consonant , which names can begin with; for example, the female name or the male . (The consonant needs to be paired with a vowel to form a syllable).

One large category of family names can be categorized as names. The kanji , meaning ''wisteria'', has the (or, with , ). Many Japanese people have surnames that include this kanji as the second character. This is because the gave their samurai surnames () ending with the first character of their name, to denote their status in an era when commoners were not allowed surnames. Examples include Atō, Andō, Itō (although a different final kanji is also common), Udō, Etō, Endō, Gotō, Jitō, Katō, Kitō, Kudō, Kondō, Saitō, Satō, Shindō, Sudō, Naitō, Bitō, and Mutō. As already noted, some of the most common family names are in this list.

Japanese family names usually include characters referring to places and geographic features.

Difficulty of reading names

A name written in kanji may have more than one common pronunciation, only one of which is correct for a given individual. For example, the surname written in kanji as may be read either Tōkairin or Shōji. Conversely, any one name may have several possible written forms, and again, only one will be correct for a given individual. The character when used as a male given name may be used as the written form for "Hajime," "Hitoshi," "Ichi-/-ichi" "Kazu-/-kazu," and many others. The name Hajime may be written with any of the following: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , or . This many-to-many correspondence between names and the ways they are written is much more common with male given names than with surnames or female given names but can be observed in all these categories. The permutations of potential characters and sounds can become enormous, as some very overloaded sounds may be produced by over 500 distinct kanji and some kanji characters can stand for several dozen sounds. This can and does make the collation, pronunciation, and romanization of a Japanese name a very difficult problem. For this reason, business cards often include the pronunciation of the name as furigana, and forms and documents often include spaces to write the reading of the name in kana (usually katakana).

A few Japanese names, particularly family names, include archaic versions of characters. For example, the very common character , "island", may be written as or instead of the usual . Some names also feature very uncommon kanji, or even kanji which no longer exist in modern Japanese. Japanese people who have such names are likely to compromise by substituting similar or simplified characters. This may be difficult for input of kanji in computers, as many kanji databases on computers only include common and regularly used kanji, and many archaic or mostly unused characters are not included.

An example of such a name is Saitō: there are two common kanji for here. The two characters have different meanings: means "together" or "parallel", but means "to purify". These names can also exist written in archaic forms, as and respectively.

A problem occurs when an elderly person forgets how to write their name in old kanji that is no longer used.

Family names are sometimes written with periphrastic readings, called , in which the written characters relate indirectly to the name as spoken. For example, would normally be read as , but as a family name it is read , because April 1 is the traditional date to switch from winter to summer clothes. In the same way would normally be read as or , but is read Takanashi, because little birds () play () where there are no () hawks ().

Most Japanese people and agencies have adopted customs to deal with these issues. Address books, for instance, often contain furigana or ruby characters to clarify the pronunciation of the name. Japanese nationals are also required to give a romanized name for their passport. The recent use of katakana in Japanese media when referring to Japanese celebrities who have gained international fame has started a fad among young socialites who attempt to invoke a cosmopolitan flair using katakana names as a badge of honor. All of these complications are also found in Japanese place names.

Not all names are complicated. Some common names are summarized by the phrase : the three kanji (, and ), together in any pair, form a simple, reasonably common surname: Tanaka, Nakamura, Murata, Nakata (Nakada), Muranaka, Tamura.

Despite these difficulties, there are enough patterns and recurring names that most native Japanese will be able to read virtually all family names they encounter and the majority of personal names.

Regulations

Kanji names in Japan are governed by the Japanese Ministry of Justice's rules on kanji use in names. , only the 843 "name kanji" () and 2,136 "commonly used characters" () are permitted for use in personal names. This is intended to ensure that names can be readily written and read by those literate in Japanese. Rules also govern names considered to be inappropriate; for example, in 1993 two parents who tried to name their child , which literally means "devil", were prohibited from doing so after a massive public outcry.

Though there are regulations on the naming of children, many archaic characters can still be found in adults' names, particularly those born prior to the Second World War. Because the legal restrictions on use of such kanji cause inconvenience for those with such names and promote a proliferation of identical names, many recent changes have been made to increase rather than to reduce the number of kanji allowed for use in names. The Sapporo High Court held that it was unlawful for the government to deny registration of a child's name because it contained a kanji character that was relatively common but not included in the official list of name characters compiled by the Ministry of Justice. Subsequently, the Japanese government promulgated plans to increase the number of kanji "permitted" in names.

The use of a space in given names (to separate first and middle names) is not allowed in official documents, because technically, a space is not an allowed character. However, spaces are sometimes used on business cards and in correspondence.

Customs

During the period when typical parents had several children, it was a common practice to name sons by numbers suffixed with . The first son would be known as "Ichirō", the second as "Jirō", and so on. Girls were often named with at the end of the given name; this should not be confused with the less common male suffix . Both practices have become less common, although many children still have names along these lines.

While some people may still believe this, Lafcadio Hearn (see below), in ''Shadowings'', makes it clear that at least in his time (1880 to 1905, the date of publication), the ending was not any part of the name, but an honorific suffix like . Particularly, even though the symbol was "child", it meant "Lady" and was used only by upper-class females. It would have been ridiculous to apply to middle-class or lower-class women. Pretty much the same names were used by all classes, but Hana-ko was upper class, while lesser women would be O-Hana-san, with honorific prefix as well as suffix.

Speaking to and of others

The way in which a name is used in conversation depends on the circumstances and the speaker's relationships with the listener and the bearer of the name. Typically the family name is used, with given names largely restricted to informal situations and cases where the speaker is older than, superior to, or very familiar with the named individual. When addressing someone, or referring to a member of one's out-group, a title such as is typically added.

Japanese people often avoid referring to their seniors or superiors by name at all, using just a title: within a family this might be a kinship relation such as , in a school it could be , while a company president would be addressed as .

On the other hand, pronominals meaning "you" (, , ) are used rather little in Japanese. Using such words sometimes sounds disrespectful, and people will commonly address each other by name, title and honorific even in face-to-face conversations.

Calling someone's name (family name) without any title or honorific is called , and may be considered rude even in the most informal and friendly occasions. This faux pas

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