Nanori
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (January 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
- View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article.
- Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
- Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 3,812 articles in the main category, and specifying
|topic=will aid in categorization. - Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
- You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is
Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:人名訓]]; see its history for attribution. - You should also add the template
{{Translated|ja|人名訓}}to the talk page. - For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.
Kanji character readings used in Japanese names
Nanori (Japanese: 名乗り, "to say or give one's own name") are the often non-standard kanji character readings (pronunciations) found almost exclusively in Japanese names.
In the Japanese language, many Japanese names are constructed from common characters with standard pronunciations. However, names may also contain rare characters which only occur as parts of names, or use non-standard readings of common characters. Often, the readings used are so esoteric that they cannot even be found in dictionaries.[1] For example, the character 希, meaning "hope" or "rare", has standard pronunciations ki (キ), ke (ケ), and mare (まれ). However, as a female name, it can be pronounced Nozomi.[2]
In compounds, nanori readings can be used in conjunction with other readings, such as in the name Iida (飯田). Here, 飯, a character meaning 'meal', is normally read as either meshi (めし) or han (ハン), but in the context of this name the special nanori reading ii (いい) is used instead. The second character 田 is read using its standard kun'yomi reading, da (だ).[3] Often (as in the previous example), the nanori reading is related to the general meaning of the kanji, as it is frequently an old-fashioned way to read the character that has since fallen into disuse.[citation needed]
See also
- On'yomi, readings of kanji based on Chinese pronunciation
- Kun'yomi, readings of kanji based on Japanese pronunciation
