Are The Ending of Names With “-suchi” or “-nosuke” Considered Feminine or Masculine?

I am making a comic for fun and I have two characters which are beans, and I’m hoping for one to be female and one to be male. I speak English, Spanish, and Portuguese but my Japanese is not good at all – so I don’t know if the ending of names can be considered masucline or feminine? Would people in Japan recognize “-suchi” as feminine and “-nosuke” as masculine? Does something like this exist?

4 comments
  1. -suchi isn’t really a name ending in Japanese. Maybe you mean -tsuki / -zuki? That’s generally a feminine ending, though you can find boys more often with certain variants, like Itsuki.

    -suke (with or without the -no-) is 100% a male ending, though, as are -rou and -ta.

    -ya can be masculine or feminine, depending on the kanji, but a lot depends on the base word you tack it onto. Ryuuya is always going to be masculine while Kaguya or Maya are always going to be feminine.

    Similarly -ki can be either, often with the same kanji, but some combinations are more likely one than the other (Misake for girls and Yuuki for boys, as an example).

    -to (or -hito) is a masculine ending, but -oto is a feminine one, so depending on the symbol combinations, Naoto can be either gender.

    Girl-only endings include -ko (but not -hiko), -ka, -na, -tsuru / -zuru, and -yo (but not wo/o).

    Finally, there are several names based on verbs wherein the base ending (with a u) is generally masculine and the nominative ending (with an i) is feminine, but this is not always 100% true and exceptions do occur.

    So, Hikaru and Hikari are unisex.

    Mamoru is masculine, Mamori does not exist (edit: was mistaken here, but it’s still not one that I’ve seen in the past seventeen years).

    Nozomu is masculine, Nozomi is feminine.

    Hiromu is masculine, Hiromi is 99% of the time feminine but there’s at least one famous male singer with that name.

    Kaoru and Kaori are both predominantly feminine, but sometimes a guy can be named Kaoru.

  2. But also, if it’s a comic, anything goes? Look at how ridiculously non-Japanese the names of so many manga/game/anime characters are!

    Japanese word for bean is “mame” so you could also go “Mametaro” “Mameya” or “Mamenosuke” for male and/or “Mamemi” “Mameme” “Komame” “Mameko” for female. Not all would work for “real names” but they’re beans so…

  3. That “nosuke” ending is interesting because the “no” in it can be represented by a kanji not otherwise commonly used in Japanese, such as 龍之介 (Ryūnosuke). Historically, that kanji (之) was used to represent the Japanese possessive particle の, but in modern use, as the hiragana is used, this kanji in that usage is obsolete, lingering around in given names like this.

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