after scouring the internet i can’t find an answer to this anywhere, but how are students’ names arranged on a class roster? i know it’s likely alphabetically, like a-i-u-e-o, ka-ki-ku-ke-ko, but for the entire grade, do they split students randomly and alphabetize their names, or is it only until a certain point in the alphabet? for example students’ names beginning with a-so (a-i-u-e-o, ka-ki-ku-ke-ko, sa-shi-su-se-so) are in a class together and students ta-ho (ta-chi-tsu-te-to, na-ni-nu-ne-no, ha-hi-fu-he-ho) are in a class together, until you reach the end of the alphabet.
this is probably worded awfully and makes no sense but this is the best way i can explain it **😭**
3 comments
What?! Why would the students be separated into different classes based on their surnames? I think you’re asking how they’re ordered alphabetically based on their surname within a class? Presumably, they follow the same logic as Westerners… Surnames starting with A first and Surnames ending with Z last. But it could also be from A to Wa (Hiragana-wise).
This is a good question. As far as I can tell, Japanese usually uses [五十音](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goj%C5%ABon), which is pretty much the a-i-u-e-o ordering you were describing.
However, I don’t know how that would work for names when you don’t always know how they’re pronounced ahead of time. I wonder if names might be arranged by radical and stroke count.
Classes in high school are often sorted by things such as entrance test scores, special academic focus, or sports scholarships.
For example, the school I work at has two upper scholastic classrooms, two dedicated focus classrooms (half science, half humanities), three general classrooms, and two sports students classrooms, per grade year.
Student names are alphabetized by the fifty-sounds system (as you described) within the class roster for most of these.
The big exception is the focus classroom format, which will have split lessons where half the class goes to a specialized science class while the other half has a specialized humanities course in the same period. Those classes essentially have two rosters, so you’ll see it run in 50-words order up to student #16 or 17, and then it resets and you get a kid with a name like Adachi for #18.
Of course, anything that crosses classroom boundaries, such as the school exam rankings, will have everyone in standard order and then list their classroom after the name.
Anyway, this is for one specific private high school, so your mileage will vary, but it’s a solid example.