I recently found and article about a guy that married a japanese woman and took her name, because apperantly his original name "Birch" would not work – i quote "sound very bad in Japanese, and we didn't want the kids to have to suffer from this"
Can someone who is fluent in Japanese explain to me, why this would be the case?
by suit1337
3 comments
Nothing obvious comes to mind. It wouldn’t sound much like “bitch” (ビッチ, or bitchi), so that’s probably not it. バーチ (baachi) doesn’t mean anything in Japanese. My best guess is that the perceived problem is that it’s very obviously not Japanese, and he doesn’t want his children to be teased by Japanese children for having a non-Japanese surname on top of not looking 100% Japanese. But I don’t know. Maybe an actual Japanese person has a better idea.
[deleted]
In Japan, the muddy sound evokes an image of toughness and strength, as well as savagery and dirtiness. For example, words such as “barbarian” and “Viking” have such an impression in Japan, but since “pirate” does not have a muddy sound, the impression of the sound is a little off.
The word “birch” is written in katakana as “バーチ”. In romaji, it is “bachi,” which is pronounced “barchi” or “bahchi”. The “ー” means that the vowel immediately preceding it is pronounced with an elongation.
Japanese words with similar pronunciations that have an intuitively negative image include 罰/ばち (bachi/divine punishment) and ばっちい (bacchii/batchii/”dirty” in a somewhat childish way).
Also, because of the “i” character, Japanese people intuitively misread it as “Derogatory expressions toward women”. Otherwise I would have read it as beach. (I would have gotten confused if it weren’t for the AI translation)
He has made a hard decision for the sake of his child, but is convinced that he will eventually become a wonderful father.