Bizarre Japanese Names

If you’ve ever tried to give a character a Japanese name, you’ve probably come across lists with plenty of names like “Daisuke (great help)” or “Masami (beautiful)” etc. etc…

But what if you want to find names like… “Niyuki (boiled snow)” or “Keana (pores in the skin)” or “Watanuki (the first of April, literally, April Fool’s Day)”

It’s worth noting here that I do not speak Japanese, and therefor I may be the April Fool in this situation, but nevertheless, I found these names in a list posted to a question on Quora, of all places… (I cannot post links for some reason…) And they’re just excellent. I love them so much. I want more.

I have no idea how to search for names like this. Everything I type into Google returns page after page of generic Japanese name results.

If anyone here can point me in the direction of more of these good, good, weird, Japanese names, I would be most grateful. Maybe you know where to look. Maybe you know some yourself. At any rate, thanks for reading, and have a pleasant day.

For some reason the links I posted aren’t showing through. I’ll see what I can do about that. Sorry!

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Is this the link you were talking about? If it is, I’ve looked up a lot of the names listed and they all seem to be surnames, not given names.

As a writer I’ve had to do a lot of research looking up names and meanings, especially from different backgrounds, like Japanese. There are a lot of Japanese surnames in Japan- I remember seeing the number listed as around 100,000 surnames. Up until the Meiji period (1868), many people did not have surnames- the ones who did were nobles, samurai, and maybe some prominent families, but the majority of people, peasants, didn’t. After the Meiji period, however, it became mandatory for everyone to have a surname. A lot of surnames originated as locational or occupational names or others just made up their own names by combining different kanji. Some surnames are very common (the three most popular are Sat”, Suzuki, and Takahashi) while others are very uncommon, even rare, which would explain why some the meaning are a little bizarre to say the least.

But, like you, I am not a Japanese speaker and what I know is what I’ve learned from my own research. I’ve come across a few sites I’ve often used and which have been reliable so far.

[URL=“https://jisho.org”]https://jisho.org](https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-strangest-or-unique-Japanese-names)

The thing about this site is if you’re looking for a name and don’t have any kanji to use, write in the name in English (such as Watanuki)- there’s a tab at the left of the search engine that says All; click on it, some tabs appear on the bottom. Go to the one that says Names, click on it and there should appear a list of names with various kanji used to write the name.

http://www.hipenpal.com/tool/japanese-names-search-and-converter-in-english.php

For the site above just write down a name, first or last, and it’ll show you all possible kanji that makes up the name, and even whether it’s a surname, a female name, or a male name. It only works for Japanese names.

Below are a few articles about Japanese surnames if you’re interested in learning more:

https://www.tofugu.com/japan/history-of-japanese-names/

https://www.tofugu.com/japan/cow-poop-is-a-japanese-surname/

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2009/10/11/general/the-long-road-to-identity/#.XiUqDy-ZNQI

I hope I was helpful.

Helpful for sure, and if not, super interesting at the very least!

I dunno what’s going on with links on this forum, but I guess you’re having the same difficulties as me.

I didn’t express my question very well. What I’m after are Japanese names with odd meanings, I guess! The ones I listed above would be “bizarre” in any language, but have a nice ring to them in Japanese, and they’re certainly unique. I know very little about the language or the Kanji, but I’ve been trying to gleam a few things from the way smaller words are combined, especially when it comes to names. (Although I suppose it’s also kinda “anything goes” for names in any language…)

So far, I’ve found RomajiDesu dot com pretty useful for translating English words to Japanese, to then see if they could be combined to form something that sounds like a name… but it feels a bit like working in reverse. I guess I figured that, somewhere on the internet, someone has to have posted a list like what I’m looking for, of just-plain-strange Japanese names.

Anyway, thanks for the response! Maybe I will try to focus my search more on surnames…

There’s this name site devoted to Japanese names and their various meanings. He could probably help you with your questions more than I can and there are some interesting names he profiles. It’s called Beyond Sakura and Hiroshi- beyondsakuraandhiroshi.wordpress.com- I don’t know what’s going on with the links. There are a lot of interesting names and their meanings and he could probably help you with looking for odd or bizarre meanings.

There’s this interesting article about unusual or rare Japanese surnames- if it shows up. An interesting one I came across is Hifumi which is written with the kanji 1,2,3- the most bizarre one was Ushikuso (牛糞) which means cow-poop, though there’s also Umajiri 馬尻 (horse-butt) and Inomata/Imata 猪股 (boar-crotch). The site is tofugu.com