Japanese Names 日本人の名前

Working at a school with about 400 students, I have a lot of names to memorize. Most of them are names I’ve never heard before (Hajime and Junpei come to mind) and some of them sound downright weird: Eigo (“English”), Wataru, Itta (the past tense of go???), Takanori (that last one reminds me of something you would eat, like yakitako). I have trouble pronouncing some names, especially the ones that start with RY: Ryo, Ryosuke, Ryota, Ryuuta. The students do love to hear me call out their names when I’m passing back papers, though; oh, how they howl at my mistakes!

I like that some names have a meaning in Spanish and are easy to pronounce: Noe (here, a girl’s name, not Noah), Risa (laughter), Reina (queen), Rio (river), Yuga (yoke, a bit weird…). I’ve also noticed that while in Spanish, “-a” is a girl marker and “-o” is a boy marker, it seems to be reversed in Japanese. Masaya, Keiga, and Shunya are all boys, while Masayo, Yukiho, Kaho, and Nao are girls. (A lot of girl names end with “ko,” “child,” too.) And there are Anglicized names, also, like Arisa or Anna.

It’s been an interesting experience to learn so many new names, and to try to match them with the faces, too! I’m still learning teachers’ names, and it will probably take me until next year to remember more than the 50 students’ names I know so far. I’m trying, though!

Here are my Top Ten Favorite Japanese Names I’ve heard so far, in order:

BOYS

1. Kohei (Kouhei) (You just can’t go wrong. Ko-hay. It sounds so nice!)
2. Daisuke (I love all those –suke endings on names, but Daisuke is my favorite)
3. Masaru
4. Masahiro
5. Takahiro
6. Daiki
7. Masaya (The Masa- and –hiro names just sound so strong!)
8. Kazuki
9. Shyou (Shou)
10. Kenji (an oldie but a goodie)

GIRLS

1. Mizuki (so beautiful-sounding!)
2. Chitose (I like the way it sounds: Chi-to-se, almost like chistoso/funny)
3. Ai (who could resist a girl named “Love”?)
4. Misaki
5. Miyu
6. Natsumi
7. Yuu
8. Megumi
9. Michiko
10. Yumiko (I like the –ko and the –mi, apparently)

If there was a kanji for “Jaimie,” I could use “美” (-mi) as the last sound (it means “beautiful”). Unfortunately, though, there’s no native Japanese sound for “Jei” in their syllabary. ジェイ美 looks funny, so I’ll just have to stick with ジエイミーor じぇいみい if I want to be snazzy. More’s the pity.