How we check Japanese names

A given name appears on a list page or a name page only if it passes one of two checks: it is on our hand-reviewed list of 226 everyday names, or JMnedict lists that exact kanji and reading as a given name, with a gender that does not contradict ours. Together that gives 2,814 spellings. Readings with more than one spelling, or on the hand-reviewed list, have a page of their own (536 in all).

Not being in JMnedict does not prove a name is wrong: it is a dictionary, not a registry. It means we cannot show the name as one we can stand behind, so it stays off the lists.

The generator draws from the hand-reviewed list by default. Its “Rare & unusual” style also uses a larger pool of given names that was compiled with AI assistance and is not fully checked against JMnedict; the generator says so when you choose it.

The surname directory has 1,983 family names with kanji, reading and romaji. Rank and the approximate number of people come from the national surname ranking compiled by Myoji Yurai (myoji-yurai.net). They are rounded estimates, not census counts, and the ranking has gaps where we do not have a surname yet.

Readings are cross-checked against KANJIDIC2 and reviewed by hand. The table shows the most common reading only.

A name's meaning is built from what each kanji means by itself: Yuka written 佑夏 reads as “help + summer”. Those single-kanji meanings come from 674 kanji notes, each written in one to three words with KANJIDIC2's definitions as the starting point, AI assistance, and a script that checks the form.

Many kanji in names are chosen for their sound (亜 a, 奈 na) or are conventional endings (子, 郎). We label those instead of translating them: 亜 means “Asia”, but in 亜美 (Ami) it only stands for the sound a. A name made only of sound kanji has no meaning to show, and the page says so.

The 226 hand-reviewed names keep a meaning written for them by hand; every other name gets the composed one. They describe the characters, not what a particular family had in mind.

Every list page picks its names with rules for its topic (for example, kanji that mean “flower” for a flower list) and orders them by how well they fit the topic, not by popularity. The page says how many names matched. The numbers on a page (how many names, how many beats, the most common kanji) are counted from the page’s own list when the site is built.

Each given name is paired with a surname so you can see a full name. The pairing is for display; it does not mean the two are often seen together.

The My name in Japanese converter turns the spelling of an English name into katakana. It looks each name up in two places: our hand-checked list of 750 common English names, and the entries in JMnedict that give a foreign given name or surname with its katakana. The converter’s dictionary holds 7,876 names and 8,816 spellings; when a name has more than one, the page shows the others.

Before a JMnedict spelling is accepted, a script checks that its consonants fit the English name, which removes entries that are really Japanese names with an English label. A spelling found in both sources is marked “standard”; one found in only one of them says which. A name found in neither is written from sound rules and marked as an approximation. When we run the rules on the names of the hand-checked list, they reproduce its spelling for just over half of them, and the rules were tuned on that list, so on other names they do worse. Treat an approximation as a draft.

The conversion runs in your browser: the page downloads a dictionary file chosen by the first letter of the name and does the matching on your device, so the name is not sent to us. No single katakana spelling is official; newspapers, dictionaries and the people who bear a name each have their own habits.

• Not a registry. A name here is a real name in a dictionary, not proof that any person uses it.
• A name can be written many ways. We show the spellings we have; there are others.
• Gender is a tendency. Many names are used for any gender, and the gender we show follows the dictionary.
• AI assistance. The page text, the kanji notes and the larger name pool behind the “Rare & unusual” style were compiled with AI assistance. The names on the lists are matched against dictionary data by script, and a core set is reviewed by hand. We have not had every page reviewed by a native speaker. Check with one before using a name officially (a passport, a contract, a tattoo).

• JMnedict (Japanese Multilingual Named Entity Dictionary) and KANJIDIC2 are the property of the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group (EDRDG), used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license.
• The name dictionary behind the converter combines our hand-checked list of 750 English names with entries taken from JMnedict, so it is shared under the same Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license.
• Surname rank and population estimates: Myoji Yurai (myoji-yurai.net).
• Everything else on the site was written for it.

Found a wrong reading or a meaning that does not fit? Email hello@japanesenamegen.com with the name and what you think it should say; a source helps. We fix the data and rebuild the pages.