Growing up, Yuni Matsumoto wanted to fit in.
But his name made things difficult. It was very rare in Japan and, what’s more, essentially illegible as written. His middle school classmates ridiculed him. The bullying became so bad that he eventually dropped out of school.
Mr Matsumoto, 24, had what is known as a kira-kira name – meaning “shining” or “glittering”. A growing number of Japanese parents are choosing these unconventional names, often in hopes of making their children stand out in a country where pressure to conform is strong.
Mr. Matsumoto’s parents were driven by this same desire for uniqueness, but for him, his name was an obstacle. This spring, he went to family court and had it replaced with a common text, Yuuki, written in a way that everyone could read. “I felt like I was finally liberated,” he said.
Japan is far from the only country where unusual names are on the rise. But Japanese children with unconventional names face societal and practical challenges unique to their country and its written language. Citing these difficulties, the government is now preparing to curb this practice, while insisting that it is not closing the space for parents to be creative.
Over the next two years, changes will come into effect in the law governing the all-important family certificates that every Japanese citizen must hold. The revisions will prevent parents from giving their children more extreme types of unconventional names and, for the first time in the records’ 150-year modern history, require notations that ensure all names can be read as intended.
At the root of the problem is an unusual feature of the Japanese language.
In Japan, most traditional names include characters, called kanji, whose meaning represents what parents hope their child will become. (For example, Hikari, a girl’s name, is written with a character meaning “light.”) Each character — parents can choose from 2,999 under the law — has a pronunciation that is commonly associated with it, and these sounds together constitute the reading. by name.
Here’s the problem: Most kanji have additional possible pronunciations, a quirk related to Japan’s adoption of the Chinese writing system more than 1,500 years ago. This can give parents an opportunity to derive an unusual pronunciation from the sequence of characters that make up a name, with an intentional reading that no one could know just by looking at the characters – the problem with Mr. Matsumoto’s name.
Seiko Hashimoto, politician and Olympic speed skating medalist, named her two youngest children Girisha (Greece) and Torino (Turin) – borrowing character sounds to create names that make sense to her, but are otherwise unreadable.
The use of Japanese names with unorthodox readings has increased over the past four decades, according to a study led by Yuji Ogihara, associate professor of psychology at Aoyama Gakuin University.
Although “Japan is not known as an individualistic society compared to the West, the increase in the originality of baby names” is an indicator of a gradual loosening of its historical collectivism, Mr. Ogihara said. . The declining birth rate may also be a factor, he added, as many parents only get one chance to give their child a distinctive name.
The term kira-kira first appeared in the 1990s – often with a negative, mocking connotation, sometimes with a class element – and entered the vernacular about a decade ago.
The word has been applied to headline-grabbing names like Oujisama (“Prince”) and Akuma (“Devil”). Cases of unusual pronunciations include names taken from anime, like Pikachu, or inspired by Western words.
There are, for example, about 1,000 women and girls in Japan whose names are written with the character “moon,” which is usually pronounced “tsuki” but reads like “Luna,” said Hiroyuki Sasahara, a linguist at Waseda University.
Not everyone with an unconventional name likes it. Urara Takaseki, founder of several startups and holder of a Ph.D. candidate in engineering at the University of Tokyo, said her unique name – hers means “spring beauty” – has helped her stand out in the business and social worlds.
“It’s a great conversation starter,” said Ms. Takaseki, 25, and it “makes it easy for others to remember you.”
But with the proliferation of unusual names, the media has paid more attention to cases of people unhappy with these names. In 2019, after a tweet from the aforementioned prince went viral, the 18-year-old gave interviews expressing the embarrassment and shame he had endured.
According to a survey by national broadcaster NHK, 4,000 people change their name each year for reasons other than marriage. In Japan, people can legally change their name without parental permission from the age of 15.
A recent survey conducted by Bengo4.com, a legal advice site, found that 80 percent of respondents thought the reading of names should be restricted by law. Many countries restrict names that could cause confusion or go against the best interests of the child.
The amendment to the Family Registry Act will limit the reading of kanji in children’s names to those “generally recognizable by society”.
Family registers, or koseki, which are kept at local town halls and contain vital information such as a person’s identity and family relationships, will also now indicate how names should be read. In written Japanese, phonetic symbols may be attached to characters as a reading aid.
“Our names are recorded by sound, not sight, in daily life, and the law has never taken that into consideration,” said Atsumi Kubota, who led the legislative subcommittee that examined the law.
Under the revisions, for example, the name Takashi, written with a character meaning “high”, cannot be read as the Japanese word meaning “low”. Also prohibited: names that would cause confusion because their reading resembles, but is slightly different from, the usual reading.
Acceptable names will include those related to foreign words with the same meaning as the characters used, those with word readings related to the meaning of the kanji, and those with unusual readings with well-known precedent. In some cases, official approval will be required, Mr. Kubota said.
He argued that the amendments would still leave room for inventiveness and would actually improve understanding of what unusual names would still be allowed.
But Mr. Ogihara, a teacher at Aoyama Gakuin, said he feared the changes would “restrict parents’ creativity in naming their children when giving them their very first gift.”
For his part, Mr. Matsumoto said he would like parents to think twice before giving their children unconventional names. Before changing his own name to Yuuki, he said he had wanted to one day give his own son that name, which is written with two characters meaning “kindness” and “hope.”
“If you have a kira-kira name, others will look at you and think your parents are socially inept or unintelligent,” Mr. Matsumoto said.
“A name,” he added, “can change the trajectory of a life.”
