Are there any specific naming practices when it comes to naming children? Do they differ for boys and girls?
There are a lot of ways to name kids in Japan, but I don’t think there’s a lot of gender difference.
The first thing that’s important to understand is that Japan has three sets of letters. Hiragana is the basic Japanese alphabet, katakana is primarily used for words that originated in other languages, and kanji is a symbol that represents a concept, word or idea that was adapted from Chinese letters.
Why am I telling you this? That’s because not only is the name important, the way it’s written is just as important to consider. Kanjis have meanings attached to them — sometimes several meanings, and they also have multiple ways that they can be read/pronounced.
For example, Ai is a very common Japanese name. It can be written as 藍、愛、あい、亜衣、亜依 just to name a few variations. They are all written in different ways, but they all are read Ai and they all have different meanings associated with them. There’s a lot of thought and care put into what kanji (or hiragana) is used for a name, the meaning and connotation associated with it, and how it’s read.
So the three components of naming a Japanese child is
What the meaning behind it is
Japanese names have a lot of significance and meanings associated with them. Not saying that English names don’t, but it’s very common for parents to put their hopes for the child in the naming, or have some sort of significance. For example, Sayaka Yamamoto is a famous singer in Japan. She was named Sayaka (彩) with the hopes that “she would bring color and joy to other people’s hearts” because one of the meanings for the 彩 kanji is ‘to bring color to; to make vivid’.
Another consideration for the name can be the number of strokes in a name. By strokes, I mean the individual lines used to write each letter. The stroke number and the order is very significant in Japan. This is how I was named, actually.
The way my name is written is uncommon but not unheard of — the first two letters of my first name are in hiragana, and the last letter is in kanji. It’s uncommon to the point of me seeing an actor on TV in Japan who also has a name with two hiragana and one kanji and thinking “this person’s name is written weirdly, what a weirdo,” and it took me a moment to realize that yes, my name is written in the exact same way and I am also a weirdo.
When my parents named me, they looked at the number of strokes in my surname, and the number of strokes in my potential names while consulting a book about strokes. It’s kind of like fortune telling/numerology in a way, and I guess it takes look at the total number of strokes in a name, how many strokes each section has, etc., to come up with a fortune. According to the book, the combination of my first name and my surname was the absolute best combination possible with nothing bad in my future, or person.
They have however, warned me against naming my own children in that way because it stressed them out a lot and they couldn’t name me what they originally wanted, because they didn’t want any disease or misfortune in my future.
Another thing that people tend to look at is the overall balance of the name, and how it looks aesthetically when it’s written out. This is the other reason why my name consists of two hiragana and one kanji. Other people who share my name tend to have two kanji, but my mother didn’t like how the first kanji looked.
It’s also common (but not required) for siblings to have similarities in their name. My father for example, has two other siblings. All three of them have one shared kanji in all of their names.
I think that’s the basics that I have to offer at the very least. There’s a lot more if you’d like to do more research into it honestly. But yeah, Japanese names are often selected very carefully with a lot of meanings attached to them, and there’s a lot to consider!
