Dictionary of Japanese Names
Japanese names have been called the "Eighth Wonder of the World". Indeed, even native speakers often have difficulties in determining the correct pronunciation for a name written in kanji, or guessing the kanji for a name written in Latin characters. In extreme cases, one kanji name can be pronounced 36 ways, whereas one romanized name can be written in more than 100 ways.
Q: Do you know how to read the name 水晶 and 海?
A: Kirara and Marin.
Q: Do you know to write in kanji the surname Hashizume?
A: Here some possibilities: 橋詰, 橋爪, 橋都 and 橋誥.
Q: Do you know how many different ways there are of writing Akiko?
A: At least 168! Here are just a few: 明子, 晶子, 昭子, 彰子, 亜喜子, 亜希子, 安貴子 and many more.
CJKI's Japanese Names Dictionary is a based on the CJK Dictionary Institute's comprehensive collection of millions of Japanese names and their variants -- the largest such repository in existence. The subset provided here consists of the most common 500,000 Japanese surnames and given names, accompanied by their hiragana readings, and over 800,000 of the most popular romanized variants, ordered by frequency of occurrence.
DISTINCTIVE FEATURES
- Comprehensive coverage: approximately 500,000 core names with over 800,000 romanized variants selected on the basis of frequency statistics.
- Over 1.5 million indexed romanized names, allowing for a variety of romanized forms, including relatively rare ones.
- Radical index with all radical variants for quick access for names of unknown pronunciation, enabling users, especially non-Japanese users, to find the readings of Japanese names written in kanji.
- Enables finding the kanji version corresponding to any of the numerous romanized variants. For example, Jun'ichirō, which can be written in kanji in at least 87 ways such as 純一郎, 潤一朗 and 凖市郎, and has at least 168 romanized variants such as Jun'ichiro, Junichiroo, Junichirou, Junichiroh, and Zyun'itirô.
- Bilingual, bidrectional: English-Japanese and Japanese-English bundled in one application.
- Designed to be easy to use for both Japanese and non-Japanese users alike, with either a Japanese or English user interface available.
- No Internet connection required.
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