Japanese name generator

The most given boy name in Japan through most of the last decade. Written 陽翔 it is sun plus soar, and both morae are light, which is why it carries across a playground.

Yu is gentleness 優 or abundance 悠 depending on the character, and to is the flying 斗 or the plain person 人. Short, unfussy and almost impossible for a foreigner to mangle.

So is a wide blue 蒼 or a played note 奏, and ta is the big character 太 that parents add when a name needs weight. Two beats, one open vowel in each of them.

Riku is dry land 陸, the deliberate opposite of a sea name, and it reads steady rather than showy. The added to gives it a third beat and stops the name sounding clipped.

Sea 海 plus soar 斗, which is why half the boys in an adventure anime answer to it. The ai is two vowels said one after the other, not the long i of an English eye.

Tomo is a friend 友 or wisdom 智, and ki is a standing tree 樹. Names closing on ki sound rooted to a Japanese ear, which is why so many quiet leading men have one.

Hiro is wide or generous 大, so the name promises a big person rather than a tall one. It sits a step more formal than Haruto without sounding like anybody's grandfather.

Dai is the great character 大 taken in its borrowed Chinese reading, which gives the name a harder opening than most. With ki behind it you get a sports captain.

Ken is health 健 or study 研, ta is size 太. The n is its own beat in Japanese rather than a tail on the e, so the whole name is three counts long and not two.

The suke ending is 介, an office in a provincial government abolished centuries ago that survived as a name part. It lends a faint formality that plain Yuto does not have.

The cherry blossom 桜, and the one Japanese girl name most people outside Japan already know. Inside Japan it reads as pretty rather than exotic, and it goes in and out of fashion by decade.

Written 遥 it means distant or far off, which is unusual: most girl names promise a quality, this one promises a horizon. The ka ending keeps it from turning solemn.

Summer 夏 plus beauty 美, one of the four season names Japanese parents still reach for. Mi is the single most common closing beat on a girl name born before the millennium.

Aya is figured silk 綾 or colour 彩, and no is the old possessive 乃, so the whole name reads roughly as of the silk. Every beat in it falls gently.

Two beats, no consonant cluster and a vowel at each end. It travels better than almost any other Japanese name, which is part of why Korea and Japan both use it heavily.

Koto is the thirteen string floor harp 琴 and ne is a note 音, so the name is literally the sound of a koto string. Three beats that all come down softly.

Momo is a peach 桃 and can also be the number hundred 百, so the name is fruit or abundance depending on which character the parents picked. Playful under either reading.

Quiet 静, and one of the few Japanese names that is also a plain adjective sitting in the dictionary. It promises a temperament instead of a looks, which makes it feel older and surer.

Light 光, used whole rather than assembled from parts. It works on a girl, on a place and on a train: the fast service between Tokyo and Osaka has carried the name since 1964.

Written 飛鳥 it is flying bird, and it is also the name of the period when Japan first built itself a permanent capital. A given name with a century attached to it.

Mountain 山 base 本, so the family lived at the foot of one. Base names are the largest single group of Japanese surnames, because almost every village had exactly one hill worth naming.

Middle 中 village 村. In a valley holding three settlements the middle one had no other feature to be called after, and the result is one of the ten commonest surnames in Japan.

Small 小 wood 林, with the h of hayashi voicing to b at the join. That voicing is a rule Japanese compounds follow, and it is the sign that the two halves fused a very long time ago.

Bamboo grass 佐々 plus tree 木. The doubled sa is written with the repeat mark 々, which is punctuation rather than a character and defeats most transcription software.

Mountain 山 mouth 口, meaning the entrance to a valley. The k of kuchi voices to g inside the compound, exactly as it does in Kawaguchi, Noguchi and Higuchi.

Stone 石 field 原. A hara is open flat ground rather than a paddy, so this family farmed somewhere the plough kept finding rocks. Plain and rural to a Japanese ear.

Pine 松 base 本. Pines were planted on boundaries and at shrine gates, so a household at the base of one lived on the edge of something. Also a castle town in Nagano.

Middle 中 field 野. A no is uncultivated open land, which is why this name feels emptier than Nakamura even though its first half is exactly the same character.

West 西 village 村. All four compass points pair with village, field and river, and which one a household ended up with depended on which side of the valley the house stood.

Shrine 宮 cape 崎, and the s of saki voices to z behind the first element. It is a prefecture, a city and the surname of the animator most people think of first.

Yamada is mountain paddy 山田 and does the job Smith does on an English form. Behind one of the decade favourite boy names it gives you the most ordinary young man in Japan.

Kuroda is black paddy 黒田, soil dark enough to be worth mentioning. Shinji closes on ji 二, the number two, which in a traditional household marked a second son.

Uehara is upper field 上原, a farm on the high ground above the village. Chiho pairs a thousand 千 with a rice ear 穂, so the pair is entirely agricultural on both sides.

Hoshino is star field 星野, one of the few Japanese surnames that reaches upward rather than along the ground. Kazumi is harmony 和 plus beauty 美, a postwar favourite.

Maeda is front paddy 前田, the field nearest the house. Genki as a word means healthy or full of beans, so the name is the closest a Japanese parent gets to naming a boy Cheerful.

Kitamura is north village 北村. Suzuka is a bell 鈴 plus fragrance 香, and it is also a mountain pass and the racing circuit that borrowed its name from the pass.

Fujimura is wisteria village 藤村, and the wisteria crest belonged to the Fujiwara, so a fuji surname often hints at a very old attachment. Naoya is honest 直 plus a soft closing ya.

Wakabayashi is young wood 若林, a coppice rather than a forest. Kotoha sets the harp 琴 against a leaf 葉, which is the sort of pairing modern Japanese parents like.

Terada is temple paddy 寺田, land that belonged to a temple and was farmed for it. Miyuri is a modern assembly rather than an old word, which is exactly how new girl names are made.

Hamaguchi is beach mouth 浜口, where a river reaches the sand. Tetsuya is iron 哲 or 鉄 with the closing ya 也, and it sounds like somebody who fixes things.

Path 道 plus child 子. It was the name of the first commoner to marry into the imperial family, in 1959, and the wave of Michikos born in the years after that is a demographic fact.

Yoshi covers good 良, righteous 義 and joyful 慶 depending on the character, so the same spoken name hid at least a dozen written ones. Peak Showa, and instantly dateable.

Setsu is 節, a joint in bamboo and by extension a season, a measure and self restraint. A name that quietly asks a daughter to be temperate, which was rather the idea.

A thousand 千 generations 代, taken straight from the national anthem. Without the ko it belongs to the generation before Michiko, and it now reads as a name from a novel.

Sada is 貞, chastity or constancy. The name was ordinary for eighty years and then a horror film took it, which is a useful lesson in how fast a name can be lost.

Toshi is 敏 quick witted or 俊 excellent, and o is 雄, a man. The o ending closed male names for three generations and then vanished almost completely inside twenty years.

Harmony 和 plus man 雄. Kazu was the character of the Showa era itself, since the reign name 昭和 contains it, so this is about as period a boy name as Japan produced.

Tetsu is iron 鉄 and zo is 蔵, a storehouse. Storehouse endings went on the sons of merchants and craftsmen, and they sound like heavy work to a Japanese reader even today.

Ichi is one 一 and taro is 太郎, big son. Together they say first born twice over, which is not redundancy so much as insistence. Still the default name in Japanese joke examples.

Yasu is peace 安 and nosuke is the linking no plus the office 助. Five beats long, faintly samurai, and the sort of name a period drama gives to a loyal retainer.