So I’ve been learning Japanese leisurely for a long time. I haven’t messed around too much with kanji (aside from when I was learning Chinese). I have a really weird question that I don’t know how to phrase, so I’ll do my best:
Fundamentally at the core, each individual kanji means something. They’re all symbols. With that being said, if I randomly put Kanji symbols together, maybe two or three at a time, even if it was not a uniform or official Japanese word or sentence, not following any grammar rules, would someone who spoke Japanese be able to interpret it?
This question was sparked by a conversation I was having about names, and how all names usually have a fundamental meaning behind them culturally or linguistically, and how do we decide on names that mean something to us without literally just calling them actual word (like David, at it’s core means “beloved”, in Hebrew (Dawid), but there’s a slight tweak in the pronunciation so you’re not just calling him the word (Dod) which can be confusing if your name is a common word). That got me thinking about Japanese names. Do all Japanese names mean something/ are translatable in Japanese? Because (correct me if I’m wrong but) usually names I’ve seen are fundamentally made with a Kanji symbol, they always have meant something as far as I’ve seen.
Like, it might not be fully translatable or make sense, but if Kanji is just symbols and each one can mean something on its own or grouped together with one or two, is it always interpretable?
Hopefully you can understand my curiosity. Sorry that this is kind of an intricate question or if I’m in the wrong group to be asking this.
2 comments
Potentially, yes. Quite a few new and slang kanji become popular every year through this method, such as in this thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/chowleen/status/1343190637630263297?lang=en
So you technically can alter kanji and create new words. However, like any other language it takes a consensus of many to interpret and accept it. I could create a new English word with Latin roots that would be understandable to an English speaker, but it would take agreement from more than just me to consider it a new word that would be usable with a wider audience.
As for names, there are some instances where names are not written in Kanji (if it’s a foreign name or just one for which there is no Kanji) and like any other culture some are chosen by meaning and some are more just that the parents liked the sound of it or thought it looked pretty written down or that it was connected to the name of someone else important in the child’s life.
For the most part, yeah it is.
At the very least, each character in a name has a meaning even if they don’t necessarily make an actual word/sentence when put together. The meaning of the individual characters is something parents often take into account when choosing names for their kids.
And there’s a lot of leeway when it comes to “making up” new words by combining kanji, which most people would be able to make a good guess at how to pronounce based on the rules of kanji readings. For example, I always thought it was really cool how they came up with the Japanese translation of “dementors” in Harry Potter. It’s written [吸魂鬼](#fg “きゅうこんき”) (although they still pronounce it as “dementor”). The word is based on [吸血鬼](#fg “きゅうけつき”) vampire. Whereas vampire uses the characters for “suck” “blood” “demon”, this swaps out “soul” for “blood.” So it’s a totally made-up word, but any Japanese speaker would be able to look at that word and immediately make an educated guess as to both what it means and how it would be read.
Pretty cool!
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(eta– lol so that furigana thing didn’t work … oh well haha