Jisho.org Forum

My turn ~

You probably know this already (as you linked this site to me...) but Tangorin has a list of the readings of all the 人名用漢字 used in names:

http://tangorin.com/vocabulary/1000

Of course names can use any of the 常用漢字 too, along with extra readings (just to add to the confusion ¬_¬)

It seems there is often no way to tell for sure how a name is pronounced based solely on Kanji, that's why in Japan they have to write it in kana too...

http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/reading-names.html

Maybe the best way to go about it is to just learn the commonly used compounds for people & place names instead.

Posted By: Kanjimancer

[p]Maybe the best way to go about it is to just learn the commonly used compounds for people & place names instead.[/p]

Right, that's why I was hoping for something like a list of, say, the 100 most common surnames, and possibly a list of the most common first names. (I know some sites for Japanese baby names, which have the most popular names that were given in recent years, but that doesn't seem to be that reflective of current adult names as I recall.)

Anyway, thanks. Maybe the book mentioned in your second link has what I want. I'll need to poke around next time I'm at a 本屋さん。

There's a link here for the top 200 Japanese surnames:

http://home.r01.itscom.net/morioka/myoji/best200.html

It's one of those old pages where you have to change the encoding. But you know, only old by internet standards. Surnames don't change that quickly.

Also top 50 in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_common_surnames#Japan

In my experience, family names are a lot more consistent. There are some tricks though, like 一戸 いちのへ and 井上　いのうえ both have a hidden の that makes absolutely no sense.
I don't think there's any problem in calling someone by their family name (and at work you have to do that anyway).
I haven't found much value in trying to memorize readings which are ONLY used for given names. Japanese people are fully aware of this problem
so there's no shame in just asking someone how to read their name. The characters 裕子 can be read ひろこ or ゆうこ (after meeting 2 such people I began to think it was pointless haha).
I just kind of learn them organically. I've noticed I can't read a lot of names of people outside of 関東 and especially 本州 But, I wouldn't worry too much.
Learning name-only readings hasn't helped me at all in my Japanese literacy. Naming styles also vary by generation (the 裕子- ひろこ was about 20 years older than the ゆうこ that I met). The days of nearly all female names ending with -子 seem　to be coming to an end. -み　（美 or 実） seem to be more popular now, at least in this area.

Another note on given names, I asked some Japanese friends / co-workers how they choose them. Usually they decide the name first (i.e. ゆか), then they have
a monk or someone who is good at choosing names pick out characters which will match the surname (adding up to a good # of brush strokes) and will have some kind of nice meaning.
That's sort of how I figure people's names before asking them about the reading. I think "OK what COULD the name be" then I sort of try to figure out what Kanji were superimposed over that reading. It's helped me a little in learning the meaning of some characters that I wouldn't have looked up otherwise. The thing that annoys me is when I ask a Japanese person "what do the characters in your name mean?" and they say "oh, nothing." And I say "BALONEY!!!!!!" I've gotten that a lot. Then I look up the characters in a dictionary and end up teaching them about their own language. :-P

All names and words have some kind of meaning or origin, or at least a purpose. Even if you're just saying "PFFF! DUH DUDE!" :-D

Richard, thanks. That's exactly what I was looking for. Yeah, I guess 100 isn't enough. I know a bunch of people with names in the 101-200 range.

Paul, it's just that I come across names a lot (credits in dramas/movie, reading articles online, book authors/characters) and I'd like to be able to read them, when I talk to people I can actually refer to the author/actor by name and things like that. (Plus, other words are usually easier to look up than name readings.) And while it's true that a lot of names given nowadays are hard to guess from the kanji, it seems like most of the common adult names now have fairly standard readings. Though indeed family names are much easier. (By the way, the hidden "の" seems pretty common with older names for people and places, and I always assumed it came from when people only used kanji and didn't use a character for の.)

You're an elementary school teacher right? Don't Japanese kids get some assignment in school asking them what their name means? (Which is, or at least should be, more than just what the individual characters mean)

Wow, you're going all out :^) Hats off to you. 偉いね！
Usually I just expect there to be hiragana above the name (in a newspaper etc.) and if there isn't I just say "oh well." Haha
They can't expect me to know how to read non-standard names, more than I could expect them to be able to pronounce "Greenwich" or "Edinburgh."
It seems like too much of an intractable problem to me. When I thought about it, not many names used in my country follow the rules either :-P
Seems like a case-by-case thing with just a lot of patterns.

I was talking about the hidden の with a Chinese friend of mine who is interested in this kind of nerdy stuff like us (she went to HS in Japan).
She brought up the idea that in old times, a lot of people were just named after their neighborhood or their job, and the older a place was, the less likely the reading was to be standard (or easy to figure out haha). Not everyone who got to name a place was necessarily highly educated, or educated in the same way.
I forgot what that's called, but maybe it's in that category of words like あした and きょう where you can't really divide the hiragana among the Kanji (???) Not 万葉仮名...
万葉仮名 at least spells everything out (albeit in randomly chosen characters) You'd probably know :^)
Some places do have the の spelled out specifically, like 三ノ輪 in Tokyo, other places don't, like 宇都宮 (うつのみや) in Tochigi.

I mostly go to jr. highs actually, but elementary schools too. I haven't heard about a name-researching assignment. They might not have it in this school district. Curricula vary from prefecture to prefecture also. Unfortunately the 国語 courses here don't seem to delve very deep into Chinese characters (omitting the fact that 音読み was an attempt at a Chinese reading)
High Schools are all different (people aren't even required to attend actually) so they may cover such topics in their courses (hopefully!).
I haven't met any Japanese people who have as deep an interest in Kanji as people on this website (or as my Chinese friend).
I know there must be a few hiding out there somewhere. I have so many questions :-P

No, I don't really get to study that often anymore. My progress is pretty slow nowadays.

I didn't know what that's called either when the kanji don't match up with characters, though I had a look on wiki and it's called 熟字訓.

About the name-meaning assignment, I'm pretty sure it happens in elementary school, though I don't know how many schools have it. I just remember one of my Japanese friends telling me that their teachers asked them to go home and ask their parents what their names meant.

Yeah, most Japanese don't seem to have a deep interest in kanji, though considering how much time they spent studying them in school and using them everyday, they probably have a deeper understanding than we'll ever have. On the other hand, I don't know too many Americans who share my fondness for etymology of words and phrases. But there are some, and there are some Japanese interested in the deeper aspects of their language. I met some of these people, and for the most part they were people who were also interested in 伝統芸能 (doing or watching) and 日本の歴史. So maybe if you get into some of the traditional arts or history, you can meet some people who share your interest in 国語. Also, I sometimes read the 国語 questions on goo, and there seem to be quite a few people on there who have a pretty deep knowledge of Japanese. I'm sure they can answer most of your questions (lately, a lot of foreigners seem to have been asking questions there) though often I have trouble understanding what people are saying there.