I studied Mandarin years ago and received a Chinese name (徐岩鋒
) from my teacher. I’ve received positive feedback on the name from Chinese speakers, and now that I’m learning Japanese I was curious about the prospects of keeping the same orthographic name as a Japanese name.
My first question is whether this is even a common practice among westerners who spend time in Japan. I would imagine that Japanese speakers might have a slightly easier time with English-language names than Chinese speakers, just on the basis of the number of English loans in Japanese, and there’s always the option simply to transcribe one’s name into Katakana.
Even if it’s not common practice, I’m curious how the name would be rendered in Japanese, if it seems like a plausible Japanese name at all. It seems like most Japanese given names consist of two Kanji and surnames of one or two Kanji, so that’s promising. According to Wikipedia, 徐 is an extant Japanese surname with the pronunciation おもむろ or じょ, although I haven’t found it on any list of common Japanese surnames, so it may be very rare. If it does occur as a surname, is either of those pronunciations more common? As for the given name, I know that Kanji often have irregular readings in names, but if I were to assume that 岩鋒 are simply pronounced with regular kun’yomi, it seems like it would be いわほこ or いわぼこ?
Again, not sure if this is simply a pointless exercise to begin with, or if 徐岩鋒 has any plausibility or usefulness as a Japanese name.
10 comments
As far as I’m aware, Japanese names aren’t adopted by people who learn Japanese.
First and last names are translated with katakana.
I’m pretty sure this is how it works.
Preface that I’m not Japanese but I’ve been living in Japan 5 years and have N1.
I’ve never seen anyone with any name even slightly similar to this. iwa the middle character is common in last names though.
Honestly even if you force a kunyomi for it it sounds kinda weird and i don’t think it will give a positive impression on ppl. It’s like if you wanted an english name but chose some German sounding gibberish.
However it would be pretty cool to have the name rendered for a hanko stamp.
Good luck! I hope you find a good solution.
I think this is a thing exclusively in Chinese.
Japanese does not do this. If you introduced yourself to a japanese person with a japanese name, they would be very confused and probably start asking you if you are half or how you have a japanese name.
All in all, it’s an extremely odd thing to do and it will hurt you significantly more than it will help. Just use your real name.
Do it. It would be a super Chad move!
The only time i’ve heard of this is if your “foreign” name is particularly hard for Japanese people to say and you’ve been living/working in japan for so long you have to fill out a load of legal paperwork. That being said, I use 情時阿 when writing my name. In japanese my name is ジョージア but i use the kanji. it has the same pronunciation though. but i only use this because i got given the kanji by my aikido sensei
not sure why this got downvoted. Happy that you like Japanese names.
definitely not a thing. transcribing your name in katakana to a kanji phonetic reading is sometimes a thing, not common at all but say you get married and take your spouse’s name you might also take on a phonetic kanji first name.
This is not a thing that people do in Japanese unless they are going through the process of becoming Japanese citizens. This would create a confusing situation every time you introduce yourself and come across as pretty cringey when you have to explain that you created a kanji version of your name yourself unless you are some type of professional artist
i have two hanko, one phonetic baso panyotopuro and one kanji basohiko hanyotaku, somewhat ofa translation of my name vasos panagiotopoulos
The first thing to realize is that names are relatively restricted in Japanese. You cannot simply use any kanji for any kind of name. The government restricts which characters and readings can be used, and social convention tends to constrain certain names to being only first or last names.
In your case, 岩鋒 is not a valid Japanese first name. The closest reading you could probably find that sounds like a name would be “Iwaboko,” but people would struggle to get there, and it would likely be misinterpreted as a strange form of last name rather than a first name anyway.
If you were a Chinese native with that name moving to Japan, the convention would be to just use the katakana phonetic spelling of the name from Chinese, and only use the kanji when asked about the origin.