Japanese name generator

A Japanese name is a family name followed by a given name: Tanaka Yui is Yui of the Tanaka family. Most people have no middle name. For decades Japanese names were flipped into Western order in English, but since January 1, 2020, Japanese government documents write them family name first in the Latin alphabet too, with the family name in capitals where it helps: TANAKA Yui. Set Name order to Family name first to see results that way.

In Japan the meaning lives in the characters, not the sound. Parents choose from two lists set by the government: the 2,136 jōyō kanji in everyday use and the jinmeiyō kanji approved for names, close to 3,000 characters together, plus hiragana and katakana.

One sound can be written many ways. Yuki written 雪 means snow; written 幸 it means happiness. One spelling can have several readings too: 大翔 can be Hiroto, Haruto, Yamato or Sora. Names also use special readings, called nanori, that only appear in names. That is why every card shows up to three kanji spellings with what each character means, and why a Japanese person may ask how your name is written before they know what it means.

Until 2025, the family register recorded only the kanji of a name, so parents could give almost any reading. Some chose kira-kira (sparkly) names with readings few people could guess. Since May 26, 2025, the reading of every name is recorded too, and it must be one generally accepted for those characters.

The Ministry of Justice gives examples of readings that would not be accepted: 太郎 (Tarō) read as George or Michael, which has no link to the characters; 健 (Ken) read as Kensama, which adds an unrelated word; and 高 (high) read as Hikushi, which means the opposite.

Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance ranks the names of babies born to its customers each year. In 2025, 翠 (Sui, kingfisher green) reached the top for girls for the first time and 湊 (Minato, harbor) for boys. Ranked by sound instead of kanji, Haruto led for boys for the 17th year in a row and Ema for girls. Half the boys' top 10 were written with a single kanji.

Japan has well over 100,000 surnames, but a few are everywhere. Many describe the landscape: Tanaka is the middle of the rice field, Yamamoto the base of the mountain. These are the most common, from a 2008 Meiji Yasuda study, the most recent large estimate.

• -ko (子, child) for girls was the standard ending in the early twentieth century: Michiko, Yoshiko, Kazuko. It fell out of fashion from the mid-1980s, so a character named Keiko sounds born before then.
• -mi, -ka and -na took over for girls: Yumi, Haruka, Hina.
• Birth-order names for boys such as Ichirō (first son) and Jirō (second son) are now old-fashioned; -to, -ta and single-kanji names such as Ren and Minato lead instead.
• Gender-neutral readings such as Hinata and Haruka are popular for both boys and girls, with the kanji often showing which.

Japanese writes foreign names in katakana, by sound: Emma is エマ and Michael is マイケル. It is tempting to pick kanji for your name, but characters chosen only for their sound can carry odd meanings. Tofugu's guide gives the example of kanji for Chris that read as corpse foster child. Use the Your name in Japanese tool above for the katakana, and keep kanji for names that are Japanese to begin with.

The kanji on our name cards come from the JMnedict and KANJIDIC2 dictionaries of the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, used under a Creative Commons licence; see our credit.