Tuesday, December 8, 2009

名前(namae): Name

How do you name children's name? In Japan we have kanji (漢字) characters which have meaning. Parents name their children's name by selecting a good combination of the kanji character, and making wishes on their names.
For example, my name Kimiko is written as 公子 in Japanese kanji character. Kimi (公) means public and ko (子) means child or girl. So my parents wanted me to be someone for the people. Girls name of our generation usually have ko at the end of the name.
Popular names are different depending on the era. In today's paper there are the ranking list of the popular names of babies who were born this year. Boy's No. 1 is Hiroto (大翔) and girl's No. 1 is Rin (凛). Hiroto has been No. 1 for 4 years in a row. There are three boy's names which have the same kanji character sho (翔) in top 10. Sho literally means to flap. Rin means handsome.
Popular names are influenced by the famous sports player or personalities. From next year there must be so many Ryo (遼) because of Ishikawa Ryo (石川遼), the youngest leading prizewinner golfer.

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