Friday, November 20, 2015

Top Baby Names in Japan 2015


I’ve written about Japanese baby names before and am writing again this year because I find it so interesting.  Here are the most popular names this year.


baby names girls




baby names boys


Two names can sound the same, but be written with different kanji, or in the case of the top “Sakura” can even be written in hiragana.  I have no idea how people who can read kanji know how to pronounce or how to “spell” names that sound the same but use different kanji, or that sound different and use the same kanji.

1 comment:

Jessica said...

I have a lot of students with these names. I think there are 3 Soutas. Riko, Yuna, wakana. I like kaede, I haven't heard that one before. There are also a lot of girls' names that end in "u"-- miku, ayumu.. it's fun to see what's popular these days.
For my 9th grade class, we're writing mystery stories and they wanted American names for guys and girls... I made big lists on the board by decade. I.e. guys named Kevin are usually born pre 1983.. they loved it, but still chose trendy names for their story characters. They don't quite get that there's no one else named Rue except for in the Hunger Games...