Japanese Names: How They Are Chosen and Written

Have you ever stopped to think about Japanese names? It is uncommon to find someone in Japan named Maria or John, and easy to find Tanaka, Sato, Sasaki, and Yamada. Where do those names come from, and what do they mean?

A Japanese name, jinmei (人名), puts the family name first and the given name second. The given name is the one parents choose, and people use it when they are close. In plenty of ordinary situations you still hear the family name, with a suffix such as san.

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How do Japanese names work?

• Most names are written in kanji. A given name can also be written in hiragana or katakana.
• One set of characters can take more than one reading, so parents choose the sound as well as the shape.
• The same sound can be written with different kanji, and those characters carry different meanings.
• An ordinary Japanese name has a family name and a given name, with no middle name between them. Someone with a foreign parent may have a middle name.
• A lot of male names end in ro, to, or ta, and many older female names end in ko, na, or mi. Haruto, one of the most common boys' readings now, sits outside that older pattern.

San, kun, and chan come after the name and mark the relationship. San is the everyday polite form. Kun is common with boys and with someone junior to the speaker. The characters, and the kana written beside them, show how the name is pronounced.

Tanaka, Sato, Sasaki, and Yamada are family names, passed on rather than chosen for the child. Sato, written 佐藤, is a different name from Saitō. Many of these surnames come from a place or from the landscape.

What parents can register

Parents choose the given name. The family name is already on the register. Under the Family Register Act, the birth has to be filed within 14 days, counting the day of birth. If the child is born abroad, the window is three months. The father or the mother files it. If they cannot, someone who lives with them, or the doctor or midwife who attended the birth, can file instead. The office is the one for the place of birth, the family's registered domicile, or the address of the person filing. There is no fee.

The characters in a child's given name have to be ones the law treats as ordinary and easy to use. That set is the 2,136 jōyō kanji, the 864 jinmeiyō kanji, hiragana, katakana, the iteration mark 々, and the long-vowel mark. On 26 June 2026 the Ministry of Justice added 勒 to the jinmeiyō list, which brought the two kanji lists to 3,000 characters together. Roman letters and Arabic numerals stay outside that set.

The reading has its own rule from 26 May 2025. A baby registered from that day needs furigana that people generally accept as a reading of those characters. A reading that reverses the sense of a character, or that turns the name into an unrelated word, is refused. The government examples are 高 read as hikushi, and 太郎 read as George or Michael. Until that date the koseki recorded the characters, and the city office kept the reading from the birth form. From 26 May 2025 the reading is written on the register itself.

Some parents also weigh the number of strokes, a practice called seimei handan (姓名判断), and look for a total they consider favorable. Others start from a sound they like, or from a character already used in the family, and then look for a reading the office will accept.

Meanings of Japanese names

A Japanese name can sound like a fruit, a color, or a number. The characters may mean that word, or they may point somewhere else. A few familiar sounds:

• Ichigo, strawberry
• Sakura, cherry blossom
• Tsukushi, horsetail
• Nana, seven
• Jūichi, eleven
• Hisoka, secret or reserved
• Kuro, black

Ichigo is the clear case. In hiragana, いちご is the strawberry. Written 一護, the name puts 一, one, beside 護, protect. The strawberry character 苺 has been open for given names since 27 September 2004, when 488 characters were added to the jinmeiyō list. A parent can choose the fruit on purpose. Someone introduced as Ichigo may be using another spelling entirely.

In writing, the two senses usually sit in different characters:

• Sawako, 爽子. 爽 is refreshing or clear, and 子 is child, a long-used ending in girls' names.
• Naomi, 直美. 直 is straight or honest, and 美 is beauty.

Haruka is one of those splits. It can be 晴香, 春香, 遥, or 遥香. 晴 is clear weather, 春 is spring, 香 is scent, and 遥 is distance. Haruma written 春馬 is spring and horse. Hajime is often 始, to begin, or 初, first.

The difficult choice of characters

Saitō is the surname that makes the problem obvious. Four spellings are the usual ones: 斎藤, 斉藤, 齋藤, and 齊藤. 斉 has eight strokes and means equal or arranged together. 斎 has eleven strokes and is tied to purification and ritual abstinence. 齊 and 齋 are the older forms. For one person, the register holds one spelling and one reading. Another Saitō family may use a different pair. Rarer spellings of the same sound exist, so these four are the ones you will usually meet.

陽翔 shows the same problem from the other side. 陽 is the sun, and 翔 is to soar. In the Meiji Yasuda survey of children born in 2024, this written form was the most common boys' name, usually read Haruto. In the 2025 survey it tied for eighth. The same characters are also read Hinato and Haruka. Across its many spellings, the reading Haruto placed first for the 17th year in a row. The family chooses the pronunciation along with the characters.

That is why the reading is written in kana next to the kanji, including on official papers. When someone introduces their name, they show the characters, say the reading, and then the sense of each one. It takes a while to see it, especially in a short explanation like this. I still find it beautiful that a name is built from ordinary words, and that it can hold several meanings, several readings, and several ways of being written. You can have a lot of fun with that.

If I were choosing a Japanese name, I would be tempted by Kyouma (凶真). 真 is genuine, and 凶 is calamity. Of course, this is a joke. Choosing a name takes time, with many options, and I would spend years deciding which is the best. And you? What name would you choose?