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As mentioned above, female given names often end in the syllable ko, written with the kanji meaning "child" (子). This was much more common up to about the 1980s, but the practice does continue today. Male names occasionally end with the syllable ko, but very rarely using the kanji子 (most often, if a male name ends in ko, it ends in hiko, using the kanji 彦). Common male name endings are -shi and -o; names ending with -shi are often adjectives, e.g., Atsushi which might mean, for example, "(to be) faithful." In the past (before World War II), names written with katakana were common for women, but this trend seems to have lost favour. Hiragana names for women are not unusual. Kana names for boys, particularly those written in hiragana, have historically been very rare. This may be in part because the hiragana script is seen as feminine; in medieval Japan, women generally were not taught kanji and wrote exclusively in hiragana.
Names, like other Japanese words, cannot begin with the syllable n (ん, ン). Some names end in n: the male names Ken, Shin, and Jun are examples. The syllable n should not be confused with the consonant "n," which names can begin with; for example, the female name Naoko (尚子) or the male Naoya (直哉). (The consonant "n" needs to be paired with a vowel to form a syllable.)
One large category of family names can be categorized as "-tō" names. The kanji 藤, meaning wisteria, has the on'yomi tō (or, with rendaku,dō). Many Japanese people have surnames that include this kanji as the second character. This is because the Fujiwara clan (藤原家) gave theirsamurai surnames ending with the first character of their name, to denote their status in an era when commoners were not allowed surnames. Examples include Atō, Andō, Itō (although a different final kanji is also common), Udō, Etō, Endō, Gotō, Jitō, Katō, Kitō, Kudō, Kondō, Saitō,Satō, Shindō, Sudō, Naitō, Bitō, and Mutō. As already noted, some of the most common family names are in this list.
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