So there’s this VTuber named Hakui Koyori (博衣こより) from Hololive, and I was wondering how her name is formed. I’ve never really understood how naming works in Japanese. **Can I just slam kanji together and make up my own name?** I don’t really get it. **Like could I just name a child 雨木 (あめき rainy/rain tree essentially) by just mashing two kanji together like that?** But those are kunyomi readings. **What if I wanted to use onyomi like Koyori?** **Could I pronounce it as 雨木 (わぼく) instead and still have the same meaning?** **When do I write a name in kanji, when do I write it in hiragana, and when do I write it in katakana?** Certain names seem more straightforward like “Yuki” (snow), but others seem a lot more complex. Even common names like 田中 (たなか) don’t really seem to make sense to me. Inside a rice field?? **Like is that actually the name or am I reading the kanji meanings too literally?** (apparently kanji dont actually have specific meanings but represent concepts or something which I just found out recently lol)
But back to Koyori, I tried copy and pasting 博衣 into Jisho and it wasn’t showing an actual word. Her name seems to just be made of kanji that have particular meanings and readings. The 博 is pronounced はく and the 衣 is pronounced い. What puzzles me though is that these are the onyomi readings (Chinese) of the kanji, not the kunyomi readings (Japanese). **I feel like I’ve never truly grasped what kunyomi and onyomi really are and when which is used.** All I know is the basic concept of onyomi being readings derived from Chinese, and kunyomi being Japanese readings. **But Japanese can’t pronounce certain Chinese sounds so…is onyomi just Japanified Chinese sounds?**
**Can Japanese names use either? When is onyomi used and when is kunyomi used for anything in general? Any rhyme or reason to it?**
But back to the name thing. I also wanted to ask if こより is supposed to mean anything. **Hakui has some sort of meaning (Dr. and Clothes kanji according to Jisho…not sure what that is supposed to mean. She wears doctor-like clothes?** I mean, shes a scientist and dresses in a lab coat, so that would make sense I guess??) **But Koyori uses no kanji. So…does this have any meaning? Or just random syllables slammed together to sound pretty?**
**Like, if someone is named 雪 (ゆき), versus someone who is named…well…博衣 (はくい), do they view their own names differently?** I know that you guys arent psychics lol, but I wasnt sure if maybe there was some general information you were aware of. **Would 雪 view their name as meaning “snow” and 博衣 view their name as “Doctor’s Clothes”?** One seems a lot more complicated than the other.
The concept of naming ANYTHING in Japanese has always escaped me. I’ve never quite gotten it. Or how certain words can seemingly be created out of thin air by combining certain kanji together. I’ve seen this with art tags. Same thing with katakana. For example, I saw “short hair” written as ショートカット. **Is this just a commonly used word or is this just katakanaized? Why not just say 短い髪 (みじかいかみ)? There are literally words for this in Japanese, why create a new katakana word?** For shits and giggles? This one seems more normal, but I swear I’ve seen some katakana words before that seem super obscure and like something no Japanese native would understand. I mean, apparently ベジタリアン (vegetarian) isnt understood by certain natives, so that says a lot.
How they form acronyms confuses me too. I remember this one anime I watched a long time ago called Oreimo (俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない AKA My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute…let’s just ignore the title for a second LMAO). **How did they decide on Ore and I? Ore Imouto? But why not like…OreIKawa for Ore, Imouto, and Kawaii?** I don’t really get it
Sorry I know this is like a massive multi-layered question but I dont know where else to look for this. It’s too many different questions to google and im getting pretty meh results. If you only know some of the information and don’t know how to answer all of it, that’s fine. If you reply, don’t feel obliged to answer all of it, though of course as much info as possible is always appreciated. Or if there is a really good guide online that you know of, please share.
I highlighted all of the questions to make it easier to look back on. I also found out on a VTuber wiki that Koyori’s name is supposed to sound like コヨーテ. Creative…I’m still curious what her name would mean if she wasn’t supposed to be a coyote-girl and if it was still written in Hiragana, if that’s possible to even know.
3 comments
Okay so there’s a couple things here:
Family names: You don’t really make up a family name, because most people have one from birth and it’s uncommon and hard to change them. Even for fictional characters usually you pick an existing one. In general they are made up of 1-3 kanji and are read by their kunyomi readings.
When picking a first name you usually come up with a name はるか or whatever and then pick kanji that have a meaning you like and fit the reading of the name like 春香. You could potentially come up with a really stupid combination here and people have done it. It’s just more common to pick something that makes sense. Compare to English where you could spell the name Elizabeth normally or something like Alyzzabeth.
I think you could use onyomi as well, it’s just not common to do so.
Most names are not actual words. One thing you see frequently though is that there are places with the same name. For example there are people with the family name 大阪.
Onyomi and kunyomi are the Chinese derived and Japanese derived readings of kanji. But there are no real rules on when to use either. Sometimes they are even used together. You can’t tell which ones is used with certainty unless you know the word.
ショートカット is not a thing about names. It’s just a loan word. Some English words are loan words in Japan and some are not. Same reason you call a restaurant restaurant in English even though that’s a french word. A short haircut is called ショートカット in Japanese and that’s it.
The Oreimo thing is about how to abbreviate things in Japanese. In English we like to take the capital letters to make an abbreviation (league of legends LOL, world of warcraft WOW etc.). In Japanese it is common to use two syllables from one word and two syllables from another word of a name to make an abbreviation. So オレイモ. Or ウタプリ for うたのプリンスさま. Generally this is just picked based on what sounds good and makes the name easily identifiable.
There’s also キラキラネーム which is where you smash kanji with cool meanings together and make up a reading. Example from the manga 推しの子: 愛久愛海; アクアマリン; Aquamarine
> is onyomi just Japanified Chinese sounds?
Sort of. It helps to think about native-Japanese and Sino-Japanese (Chinese-Japanese) *words* instead of just kun and on *readings*. Remember that when Japanese people first learned to write, they already had a language of their own, and it didn’t sound or work anything like Chinese. When they acquired Chinese characters, Japanese people discovered that they could use them to represent the words that they already had. 人 means “a person”, so they used it to represent their word for person, *hito*. This is what kunyomi is. Native Japanese words represented by a Chinese character that has the correct meaning. But Japanese people didn’t just learn Chinese characters. They also learned the Chinese language. For many centuries, the written language used the most by scholars and officials wasn’t Japanese, but Classical Chinese. As a result of learned people knowing and using Chinese, many Chinese words (or Japanified versions of them) became part of the Japanese language too, especially for the kinds of serious, literary or scientific things that people would write about in Chinese. The Chinese word for “person” that came over with the character 人 sounded like *nin* or *jin* to Japanese people, so they used it in constructed words like 人間, 星人, and 人類学. This is on-yomi. Japanified Chinese words or words that were constructed in Japan according to Chinese logic to describe something new. Today, about 60% of words, especially the fancy ones, are Sino-Japanese.
English is similar. We had a native, Germanic language before William the Conqueror, but after 1066 the nobility spoke French. And learned people wrote in Latin and Greek. Our basic words are still Germanic, but we have lots of French words and lots of Latin and Greek roots and endings like *non-*, *aqua-*, *-ology*, and so on. So today, about 60% of English words, especially the fancy ones, are Roman or Greek.
To return to the same example, if English were written like Japanese then 人 would be the Roman character for “person”. The kunyomi of 人 is *man*, which meant “a person” in ancient English, though now it usually means “a (male) person”. It is used by itself, and in various native-English compound words like 人hood, 人ly, handy人, and 人spreading. But 人 also has a frank-on reading, *homme*, which appears in a few uncommon words like bon人ie. It has a rome-on reading of *hom(o)* that is used in words like 人icide and 人inid, and in Roman idioms like *ecce 人* and *ad 人inem*. And finally, it has a couple of achae-on readings, *andr(o)* and *anthrop(o)* that appear in all kinds of of scientific words like 人ology, 人gen, mis人ry, 人gynous, 人morphic, and so on…