世論 What Japan Thinks

You may remember a couple of months back I wrote about how the Japanese_name article in Wikipedia was a bit naff. Well, just today I’ve been having a number of hits from that article in Wikipedia, which seems mostly unchanged to me. So, rather than be negative again about it, I think I’ll point out all the bits that seem wrong to me.

Common surnames in Japan include Aoki (青木), Sato (佐藤), Kato (加藤), Suzuki (鈴木), Takahashi (高橋) and Suto (須藤).

Seems a strange selection of names to me. Referencing an Excel sheet with the top 500 names, I see that sure enough Sato is first, Suzuki second, and Takahashi third. However, Kato is merely 10th, Aoki is quite far down in 40th, and Suto all the way back in 186th!

Common male name endings are -shi and -o; names ending with -shi are often verbs, e.g., Atsushi which might mean, for example, “to be faithful.”

Nothing to tell us about names ending in -o?

An example of such a name is Saito. While there are over 100 kanji that can be read as sai and over 200 kanji for to, in this case, there are two common kanji for sai. The two sai characters have different meanings: 斉 means “together” or “parallel”, but 斎 means “to purify”.

That “such” refers to what? It seems to be in reference to the previous paragraph, which talks about using the old versus the new form of the same kanji in people’s names, not using a similar kanji with a different meaning but the same reading. In fact, this paragraph refers to the difficulty in writing a name, but the section it is in is entitled “Difficulty of reading names”.

Kanji names in Japan are governed by the government’s rules on kanji use. There are currently (Oct 2004) 2,232 “name kanji” (the jinmeiyo kanji) used in personal names [...] Japanese government regulations currently restrict the number of kanji that can be used in naming infants to 2,230, but many old characters are still intact in adults’ names.

Where did two kanji go? In addition, the first sentence fragment contradicts the second.

Most Japanese people and agencies have adopted customs to deal with these issues. Address books, for instance, often contain furigana or ruby characters to clarify the pronunciation of the name.

This does not sound like a regulation to me; it perhaps belongs in the previous section on reading names.

In ancient times, people in Japan were considered the property of the Emperor and their surname reflected the role in the government they served. An example is Otomo. Names would also be given in the recognition of a great achievement and contribution.

What role did an “Otomo” serve? How about an example of a name given for a great achievement.

Many surnames originated from Chinese and Korean names. Examples are Kaneshiro (金城) (Chinese) and Chan (Korean).

Why no kanji for Chan?

During the period when typical parents had several children, it was a common practice to name sons by numbers suffixed with ro (郎, “son”). The first son would be known as “Ichiro”, the second as “Jiro”, and so on. Girls were often named with ko (子, “child”) at the end of the given name; this should not be confused with the less common male suffix hiko (彦). Both practices have become less common, although many children still have names along these lines.

This is the third time ro, ko and hiko has been talked about. This should be refactored.

Many ethnic minorities, mostly Korean and Chinese, living in Japan adopt Japanese names to ease communication and, more importantly, to avoid discrimination. A few of them still keep their native names. One ethnic minority who keeps his original name is Chang Woo Han, a founder and chairman of Maruhan Corp., a large chain of pachinko parlors in Japan.

You don’t avoid discrimination with a Japanese name, although it might reduce it, or only avoid it in certain circumstances. Can a person be an ethnic minority rather than a member of one?

Many stand-up comics like the duo Beat Takeshi and Beat Kiyoshi choose a Western name for the act, and use their own (or stage) given names.

This sentence makes little sense to me. Does it mean a Western family name is chosen? How many is “many”?

Japanese living overseas, such as Yoko Ono (小野 洋子 Ono Yoko) and Ichiro Suzuki (鈴木 一朗 Suzuki Ichiro), usually use the Western order as well.

Yoko Ono is a US citizen, is she not, and I don’t really know what this is getting at. Where does Ichiro use the Western order of his romaji name? I would guess that most Japanese travelling overseas (where overseas excludes Korea and China…) would use Western order when writing their name in romaji.

The following English publications tend to use the western order to refer to Japanese figures:
Newspapers: see Category:Japanese newspapers
Credits in movies
Characters in comics

A character in a comic (why not use manga here?) isn’t a publication.

The following tend to keep the original Japanese order:
Scholastic articles
Reference works including encyclopedias

The Wikipedia Japanese name style guide says that Western order should be used for modern figures, which seems to be a contradiction.

These two sections quoted above also seem to clash with the recommendations in the previous unquoted paragraph about order for modern versus historical names.

Characters in translated Japanese manga, anime and video games are a special case.

But, we just established they tend to use Western order, for comics at least.