I’m writing a book and the main female character is Japanese. She appears in a post apocalyptic wasteland so I guess technically, formerly Japanese. I would like some help with generating a name for her with meaning.
I’m finding names I like but the meanings seem to vary depending on whatever arbitrary site I find them on. Will you please help actual name meanings of the following:
Hama, Mego, Haru, Airi, Mitsu, and Yasu
I’m also open to suggestions if there’s a name you like.
Thank you
3 comments
A cool thing about japanese is that names are written with kanji, and therefore have a more or less explicit meaning. For example, 焔 (pronounced “homura”), is a common Japanese name that means “flame”. So you can choose a name that fits her personality/backstory/etc., it can make for a nice detail for some readers to pick up.
When you enter a kanji, [Jisho](https://www.jisho.org) displays names that contain it on the right side, so you can use it to pick one, just make sure to do some research on it beforehand to be certain to pick a name that’s still used today and doesn’t have any negative stereotype going on about it.
It depends on what meaning you want to give the name. You can look up any word’s translation on jisho.org and look at some Kanji that appear. Then choose one of them and put in the search bar alongside #names. This will give you names that you can choose from, and its pronunciation.
Example: I looked up “survive” and although 生き残る is probably the best translation, I wanted to see if there was a single kanji that represented surviving. I scrolled down and found 凌ぐ and I liked its several meaning, so then I grabbed only the kanji 凌 and searched 凌 #names which gave me plenty of results (thankfully, I’m not sure it would always be possible to have results), some with another Kanji to complement the meaning. From the ones I saw I really liked Shinoki 凌木, which means a tree that survived or endured. Last thing I would do probably is to look around on the internet if I can find someone actually called that name, since some of those that appear might be really obscure or something. Anyways that’s the way I would do it if I were you, good luck with your book!
Maybe we could start a sticky or a wiki for all the authors we get?