Hello! I’m creating a character with a Japanese name and I had a quick question. I was looking at Japanese names on a website and came across the first name Yae with the kanji 夜永. The website states 夜 means “night” and 永 means “forever and ever”.
I then did some further digging, and I found Yae was also a surname. Although, most of the kanji had 八 meaning “eight”. Such as 八重(八—“eight”, 重—“weight”). Or 八江 (八—“eight”, 江—river”)
I like the meaning behind the first name, but could it be used as a surname? Or should I stick to the other meanings if I want to use Yae as a surname?
3 comments
use the dictionary and you will see
https://jisho.org/search/yae%20%23names
Do you need to be authentic? There would be exactly zero people in Japan with 夜永 being their surname, but if you don’t need to be authentic then it doesn’t matter.
Yae in general is a very uncommon surname (Yae Miko excepted) — to the point that everyone using 八江 from your example is probably from the same family / know each other.
I’d run through the other possible pronunciations of 夜永 to see if there might be a pronunciation that a native speaker might say first, especially considering its not a natural word. You might be able to contrive a fun pun like how yaei sounds like camping 野営 etc. Yoei might be a more natural pronunciation which is even funnier.
(Also 永 is ei えい not e え)
Quick Googling also reveals that there’s a Taiwanese(?) Video game 夜永 eternal love with very good reviews. Can’t seem to find how the title is produced though.