Japanese Names Introduction

Modern Japanese boy and girl names are made up of a family name , followed by a given name. Although common in the other countries, "Middle names" are usually not used. The Japanese kanji ( Chinese characters ) for a name may have a number of possible Japanese pronunciations, but parents might use hiragana or katakana (i.e no Japanese characters ) when giving a name to a Japanese girl or Japanese boy.

First names are much more diverse in pronunciation and character usage than Japanese family names. Male names often end in -r� (郎 "son", but also 朗 "clear, bright"; e.g. "Ichir�") or -ta (太 "great, thick"; e.g. "Kenta"), or contain ichi (一 "first [son]"; e.g. "Ken'ichi"), kazu (also written with 一 "first [son]", along with several other possible characters; e.g. "Kazuhiro"), ji (二 "second [son]" or 次 "next"; e.g. "Jir�"), or dai (大 "great, large"; e.g. "Dai'ichi") while female names often end in -ko (� "child"; e.g. "Keiko") or -mi (美 "beauty"; e.g. "Yumi"). Other popular endings for female names include -ka (香 "scent, perfume" or 花 "flower"; e.g. "Reika") and -na (奈, or �, meaning greens; e.g. "Haruna").

Recent times have seen parents looking to more modern sounding names and forgoing the usage of -ko as it is perhaps more closely associated with older generations of names for girls. Some examples of new modern sounding names include Nana, Rina, Emi, Rinka, Mei, Funa. As you can see these are rather short, two syllable names that do not make use of the KO suffix.

You will find lots of useful information here so take your time to peruse the site and enjoy our collection of names. We are always working to improve and update the lists with the latest available information  regarding first names, surnames and other categories such as cute names, funny names, famous names, popular names and more.