Japanese names that are “modern”

38 comments

1. If your child is going to grow up in the US mainly, maybe it doesn’t matter much if their Japanese name is dated. No matter what you pick it will be unusual to most Americans when they hear it. And when the child meets an actual Japanese, it’s going to be unusual for an American to have a Japanese name, no matter if it’s dated or modern.

   ps Those names you listed are maybe a little dated but not archaic. Like people born in the 70s-90s would have those names.

   pps I knew a guy from Central America who had a Japanese dad but grew up abroad. His name was Teruo. The Japanese he met thought it was kind of funny that this cool young foreigner had such a conventional name, but it wasn’t a big deal. And everyone called him Teru anyway.

2. I was going to call my son “Akira” until a W friend said “You really want to name him after a car?”.

   Obvious Acura and Akira are different, but not to many North American’s ears.

   That is the kind of unexpected stuff that comes up that you might not think about.

   IMO You can’t go wrong with Kenji. Its strong, its cool, and they can just go by “Ken” if they want.

   I call my Japanese friends named Kenji or Kentaro “Ken-chan” anyway.

3. [deleted]

4. 雨音 Rein!

5. When I was a university student there was an exchange student named “Miho”. All the Aussies pronounced her name “my hoe”. Yes, as in how Snoop Dog would say it.

   Imo a name that’s easy to pronounce for westerners is the #1 thing.

   For our son we went with Taira (太一良), the western version bring Tyler.

   Yes I’m an Odd Future fan.

   Edit: also, a modern sounding gender neutral name – Kikyo.
   I’ve seen guys and girls named this.

6. Firstly I am not Japanese so take this with a pinch of salt.
   I think most of those names are really boys names rather than gender neutral. They are also not so dated, more “tried and tested” – many young children have these names. I guess they are like Peter, James, Michael etc. in English.

   Go with a name you like – vet it a little, but don’t worry too much. The next headache is then deciding on the kanji. Good luck!

7. Sora

8. Minato
   Taiyo
   Haruto
   Yuuto
   Hikari

9. Is their surname going to be Japanese or Western? If Japanese then a Japanese name is good, if Western then a joint Japanese/Western name like Ken or Naomi is good. There must be a list of these somewhere.

   Mixed names can sound jarring to me. Like Taro Smith or John Tanaka.

10. Tamasaburo is an up and coming name

11. “ルカ　Luca” is in a unique situation between Japanese and English. The name is normally considered to be he/him name in English, but somehow it’s she/her name in Japanese, so it’s kind of gender-neutral I guess? It’s increasingly popular and modern name in Japan as well. Besides, your child wouldn’t confuse people from both countries by giving unfamiliar name since Luca is recognised in both!

12. I’m JA married to a Japanese guy who grew up mostly in the States. So we didn’t have the context for names either. We named our daughter a pretty antiquated name because we liked it the best. It’s a three syllable name, but the third syllable makes it a bit hard for English speakers to say, so when speaking English we drop the third syllable. All of our English speaking friends and family call her by the two-syllable nickname, whereas most people in Japan call her by her full first name.

    Are you going for gender-neutral specifically? I think the names you listed strongly skew toward boy names. One name I like that I’ve heard for both boys and girls is Hinata.

    Edit: whoops, just saw your edit that you don’t need it to be gender neutral! And yeah we know several Aoi’s, haha.

13. It’s worth considering how the names will be read by an American if that’s where the child will grow up.

    The romaji sounds are from Portuguese. So a lot of names will read differently than they are written.

    As a child every Japanese name is likely going to be shortened and will almost be appended with -chan (girls, sometimes boys), -kun(only boys). Later in life or in formal situations it will be -san

    Kenji will become Ken-chan or Kenji-kun. Momoka might become Momoka-chan.

    Any complicated name or name that doesn’t cleanly accept being appended will definitely be shortened to make it easier to say.

14. Maybe you should drop the gender neutral requirement and you end up with some dual use name for boy, and a lot for girls.

    By dual use I mean they have Japanese sounding name in Japan and Western sounding name in the West. You then don’t need middle names which are a pain in the ass in some context especially in Japan.

    For ex for boy :
    – Eugene / Yuujin
    – George / Jouji
    – Louis / Rui
    – Dan / Dan
    – Ken / Ken
    etc.

15. I see that gender neutral isn’t that important, but since you mentioned it, a couple three syllable gender neutral names are Hikaru and Kazumi.

16. Here are some more gender-neutral names:

    Ayumu, Amane, Yuzuki, Chiaki, Masaki, Natsuki, and Hiyori (this has a ‘ri’ sound but I love it so much)

    I know young Japanese children with these names, who are boys and girls.

17. Aoi, Midori, Luka, Sora, Iroha we’re a couple gender neutral names that we considered when we were expecting our first.

18. I’ve seen mixed couples here in Japan sometimes choose names that work both in English and Japanese. For example, there’s “Hana” for girls, which would be read as “Hannah” in the US. It helps the kid have a name that people can pronounce regardless of where they are. This might be an angle you want to consider.

19. Hinata is cute— we are struggling with favoring “male” names. We don’t know the gender of the baby yet, so trying to find some that would work for a daughter, even if they skew a little masculine.

20. Out of your listed names I‘d go for Takumi or Shohei. Have you considered making the Japanese name a middle name with a more American first name (or vice versa)? My kids are half Japanese and have a western first name and a Japanese middle name. In Japan they are normally called by the middle name, first name for outside of Japan. Made it much easier to pick the names in the first place.

21. I’m not sure why the characters matter at all. The child will never have an official kanji name. Even if you visit Japan often the child is always going to be a foreigner and will never have a Japanese ID. So you should do whatever you want there and not worry about it.

    Along that line of reasoning I think it doesn’t matter if the name is antiquated as again this is not a Japanese child. You should choose the name you like that can preferably be pronounced by people in both countries. I think Yusuke, Izumi and Kokichi (Ko-kitchy??? with that annoying thing where the voice goes up at the end as if questioning the person’s very existence) will throw Americans off but the others should all be fine.

22. I’d advise against Yusuke (or any of the -suke names) if you’re concerned about names that may be difficult for English speakers to read.

23. I vote Hikaru. It’s unisex and if in America it can be explained as naming after the badass Hikaru Sulu and folks will be like “ah trek nerd eh?”

24. I’m American married to my Japanese wife and we live in America with a boy born in October. Since our son is a dual citizen we wanted to make sure he had a name that could be written in Kanji in case he decides to live there later but would also be fine in America. We both loved and settled on Shota (将太) and gave him the same American middle name as me, so if he decides later he wants to go by an American name he can use his middle name. It is a quite masculine name though.
    I really loved Shohei also but didn’t want him to be asked about a baseball player his whole life since that’s all Americans would have as reference. It’s a fun and sometimes stressful process naming a child but I hope you enjoy it and settle on something great. Good luck!

25. Yuki

    Mirai

    Rai, Rei & Ryo, even though you say you avoid r/l

26. Hideo/ Hideki sound a little bit old fashioned
    They makes me think of 50-60 year old man when I hear them.
    It’s not like it’s a name exclusive to girls but Izumi sounds a little bit girly maybe.
    I think Takumi and Yusuke are the most modern sounding names out of these.

27. Reimi has always been a favorite of mine 🥰 leans feminine for sure but you mentioned you were having trouble leaning towards male sounding names so just thought I would drop it anyways! Others that might fit your criteria could be Masaki/Mikami that also lean feminine but can be neutral/surnames.

28. one thing with common “ha-fu” names that exist in both english and Japanese is that they’re almost a little stereotypical.. there are lots of half-japanese people out there named hana, sean and ken, you know?

    not necessarily a bad thing but just something to think about

    anyway, anecdotal list of names of kids that I feel aren’t outdated and are also easy to say in english.

    girls:

    * maki (mainly female but I met a boy with this name too)
    * yuna
    * mei
    * ayaka (maybe sayaka too)
    * miyu
    * mio
    * seika / saika

    boys:

    * yuto
    * hayato
    * yuma
    * nao (works as a girls’ name too)
    * tomo
    * towa
    * toma
    * sota
    * taiki / daiki

    also, watch out for names ending in “e”. someone in the US might read “yusuke” in a way that rhymes with “luke”

29. All gender neutral:
    +1 to Hinata
    Haruki, Chiharu, Haruka, Yuki, Mizuki… I realize -ki is common.

30. Good work on avoiding the ‘tsu’ and ‘r’. Let me also suggest you avoid ‘fu’: it’s unlike the English ‘f’. Be aware that intonation is very different from English, and doesn’t have silent letters. We had to put an accent on my daughter’s name’s final ‘é’ vowel, so it gets pronounced halfway correctly.

    My wife is Japanese. I’m Anglo-Canadian.

    There’s some voodoo about in/auspicious names for birth dates. It’s nonsense, but culturally relevant. Do some Googling.

    Also, I find the bilingual names overused: Ken, Anna, Hanna…

    Finally, you may do them a small disservice if they have both Japanese first and surnames, and Japanese features: in Japan, people will find it odd they’re unable to communicate fluently. I had a second generation Japanese-Canadian acquaintance with excellent, less than fluent Japanese, who told me that people assumed she was a bit dumb, at first.

31. Congratulations!

32. TakeShi

33. Most of them look fine, though except Izumi they feel more male than gender neutral.
    One exception: Kokichi feels extremely old, like something out of a Kurosawa movie. It definitely has that Mildred effect you were mentioning.

34. FWIW I just finished work as an ALT in two senior high schools. Out of your list, I think Shohei, Takumi, and Kenji are the most likely names to be found in any of my classrooms. However, similar to English, I think male names in general are slower to sound “old timey” than female names (for example, James or Edward are classic names but are still perfectly fine to name your baby today; I can’t think of many male names that sound too dated to use compared to female names). I’ve seen plenty of boys in my classes with classic sounding names. Meanwhile, out of the hundreds of students I taught, I could probably count on one hand the number of girls whose names end in -ko (子).

    I also agree that if the kid is going to grow up in an English-speaking country, you will want to make sure it’s a name English speakers can intuitively read and/or a name that kids are less likely to make fun of. Or make your child’s middle name Japanese and give them a “normal” English first name (my Japanese grandparents did that with my dad and my aunts, and even my grandfather changed his first name to Peter while using his Japanese given name as his middle name when he came to Canada).

35. Call em bob

36. Avoid anything w three syllables like Ayaka or Yukiko. Americans will mispronounce it as ah-YAY-ka (like tomato). Best to go for something with one syllable Leo, Anna or two like Moyu, Yuji, Taisei. Source: am Japanese and have seen my three-syllable named friends suffer.

37. Some trendy names at our kids daycare facility (focussing on boy names since your original list is only male names):
    Ayumu, Arata, Taiki, Kouki, Kengo, Shougo, Haruto, Haruki, Daiju, Itsuki, Touma, Jouma, Rento, Yuuto, Yuusei, Kotaro, Yuuta

    Not all modern, but still in rotation!

38. From the cast of Love is Blind…

    Male:

    Takumi

    Jinya

    Yudai

    Mori

    Shuntaro

    Odacchi

    Atsushi

    Sho

    Misaki

    Ryotaro

    Ryoga

    Mizuki

    Wataru

    Female:

    Toshie

    Midori

    Motomi

    Eri

    Ayano

    Maki

    Nana

    Priya

    Kaoru

    Nanako