Every day thousands of people access suki desu to see a list of Japanese names and their meanings. Unfortunately it is impossible to create a complete list of Japanese names with all the meanings because the possibilities are endless. In addition to there being several names with the same pronunciations, the ideograms that make up the name totally change the meaning.
We made a short video on the subject of this article, let's leave it below for you to watch:
If you have some basic knowledge of the Japanese language and can get the kanji of the name you want to know the meaning of, you can easily look it up in the jisho dictionary and check the meaning of each kanji. That's right, a name can have multiple meanings from each kanji that makes up the name. And when you don't have the kanji?
Generally, people know absolutely nothing about the Japanese language and just want to know the meaning of a name or choose a name. In this case, the person can write the name they want to know the meaning of in romanized form using the filter or hashtag #names on jisho.
She will be presented with a huge list of Japanese names, you will notice that each ideogram represents a sound, so a Japanese name or surname is usually composed of 2 ideograms. Identify the ideograms that make up the name you want and search individually for each one to know the meaning.
Of course, when searching for a romanized name in jisho, it will present several names written with different ideograms. So you'll probably have to research several of the same names to determine what means is best for you and the name you've chosen, and finally use it for what you want.
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And when I don't have a name in mind?
When you don't have a name in mind, you can first look up the meaning of some ideogram and use it to do a search and list names that use that ideogram. For example: I want a name that means love, so I must search with the hashtag #names for the ideogram 愛 (ai).
To know the ideogram that means a certain thing you must write the word in English and use the hashtag #kanji. You will be presented with several options and you can also select the kanji to know details and the readings for “name” it offers.
When searching for names that use a certain ideogram or kanji, the first pages of the search will present names with only that ideogram and most of the time with one syllable. Just advance to other pages to see more interesting names that use other ideograms.
Japanese names can vary greatly. There are no rules in choosing ideograms and readings for names, but there is a pattern and popular and common choices in Japanese names. To delve deeper into the subject I will leave a list of articles below that can help you:
Japanese Nicknames Derived from Names
Now that you know a little about Japanese name choices, how about choosing nicknames? Yes, Japanese nicknames are quite peculiar.
Usually Japanese nicknames are chosen with junctures, abbreviations and changes in the personal name, or also by adding treatment suffixes.
If you want to delve deeper into Japanese nicknames, we have a complete article that you can read by clicking here >> Everything about Japanese Nicknames! We also have an article about Korean Nicknames.