Do Japanese people sometimes name their child after an ancestor (possibly one who has died years, decades, or centuries ago)? This is for a story I’m writing that has a Japanese-American character whose name may be the same as their fully Japanese grandfather.
4 comments
Them being Japanese American and it being a common thing in American culture is all that matters.
But, historically it’s common for decendants to share a character in a name.
See Oda Nobunari the figure skater and descendant of Oda Nobunaga.
Like the previous commenter said it’s common to share a character in names, but not particularly common to give them the exact same name. For example, my (Japanese) husband’s father is named Masahiro and his eldest brother is named Yoshihiro. The character for “hiro” is the same. To name a child a “Jr.” is not common. However, since your story is about Japanese-Americans I think you could be a little more casual with that because giving a child the same name as an elder is very normal here.
So you’re really asking if this is something *Americans* who happen to be of Japanese ancestry might do. In that case, sure, why not. Seems likely enough. Japanese people in Japan doing it? Not so much.
From the diasporic standpoint, most of my cousins have at least one middle name taken from an issei or nisei’s given name with a Japanese name, as a sort of namesake.
Also from the diasporic perspective, kanji is unofficial, and while we may have a kanji that we like or that our parents or grandparents gave to us, those kanji would not be recognized by the Japanese government. (The Japanese government would actually katakanize our Japanese last names, say, on a residence card, if we do not have a koseki somewhere in Japan.)
Edit: This is to say, it won’t be common in the diaspora to give a child the same Japanese first name as the Japanese ancestor, but it is very common to give the child a middle name that is their namesake (for girls and boys). For example, ancestor could be Midori Nakamura, and the child could be named Jane Midori Nakamura. The Japanese government would put something like ジェーン・ミドリ・ナカムラ on a visa or immigration document if Jane were to travel to Japan or live there.