I’ve been using Futaba for a while now as a gender-neutral name (I’m genderfluid and my language has no gender-neutral names at all to my knowledge) for some time now, but I only now realised I can’t find a good source on whether it is, in fact, gender-neutral, or just straight up feminine
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I am a pure novice. This is from a Google search.
[Male name. ](https://japanese-names.info/first_name/futaba/) It does not provide the kanji but says it also works for females.
There are plenty examples of females with the name it seems.
In what context do you need a Japanese name, out of curiosity?
any names can be neutral, for example, 美樹 is used predominantly for a female name, but it is actually used for males in rare occasions. So, 双葉 can be neutral, but most people probably think it’s a female’s. from my experiences, 葉 is much more common in female’s names than male’s.
If you look in Japanese, you can find people asking if it’s too feminine to use as a boy’s name, so yes, it’s seen as a feminine name.
Here’s a page that if you scroll down, you will ジェンダーレス names.
https://pon-navi.net/nazuke/popular/chuuseiteki-namae
I don’t have much experience with Japanese names, but Futaba is the name of a girl in the game Persona 5, so there’s that.
I found most sites listing it as a female name. But, I saw a site listing 双葉 as neutral, but read as そうよう instead
As others mentioned. A foreigner with a japanese name (unless you are a japanese descendant) is really strange and foreigners always use katakana for their names.
The only time I’ve heard of foreigners adopting a japanese name is when foreign sumo players compete in official matches.
Also have in mind that most of the time people will call you by your surname and not your given name.
About gender fluid, I’m not entirely sure what that means (sorry for my ignorance) but there are names in Japanese that can be used for male and female like Kaoru, Akira, Izumi, etc. But if you are female, japanese people will still take you as female disregarding if your name is gender neutral or even male sounding. I doubt there is a gender fluid concept in Japan.
It seems to be if you search in Japanese. It’s not an official rule or anything, but people seem to assume it’s a girl’s name when they see and hear it.
I hope a native speaker can give you some help on this cause I’m curious what NB people in Japan do when going for a name change and just which names are gender non-specific.
You don’t need a Japanese name unless your of Japanese decent. It isn’t like China where it’s fine to give your self a Chinese name. In japan it’s a bit weird.