Well-known Japanese stars with traditional names include artist Yoko Ono Lennon, fashion designer Issey Miyake and actor Mitsuki Takahata. The English model and singer Suki Waterhouse is the proud owner of a popular Japanese name for girls, as is Rumi, the daughter of megastars Beyoncé and Jay Z.
If you’re into anime, Japanese hand-drawn or computer-generated animation, then Japanese baby names for girls and boys may also appeal. Mumsnet user Dancingonthemoonlight says, “My youngest has a Japanese name literally straight from anime. I'm pregnant now and looking at Japanese names again. No Japanese origin from either myself or partner.”
What are kanji, hiragana and katakana?
Before diving into the world of Japanese baby names, you first need to know about kanji, hiragana and Katakana, sets of characters used to create a visual representation of a baby’s name.
Kanji are ideographs borrowed from Chinese culture and each kanji character represents an idea or concept with the pronunciation changing based on the context of the word.
“Please take into account the fact that each name has its meaning based on their Kanji,” advises Mumsnet user whoamI00.
Hiragana and katakana are phonetic syllabary alphabets, which represent the same 46 syllables, but which have no meanings linked to individual characters. Generally speaking, hiragana is used for Japanese words and katakana is used for words borrowed from other languages.
When considering baby names, the difference between the various ways of writing them are fairly striking. For example, the popular Japanese baby name Himari looks like this when written with kanji characters: 日葵 In hiragana characters it’s ひまりor with katakana, it’sヒマリ
Most Japanese people are accustomed to using kanji, hiragana and katakana depending on the context in which they’re writing their names. Though parents can just use one character in their child’s name, many opt for two or three character names. Historically, four-character names tend to be reserved for the family’s firstborn son.
All this variation means that you have so much choice when it comes to Japanese baby names. Just so you know, for ease of understanding in our lists, we have used the English word alphabet rather than kanji, hiragana and katakana characters.
How we chose the top Japanese baby names
When selecting the top Japanese names for babies, we first checked the latest baby names stats for English and Wales, listed by the ONS in May 2024. To discover which baby names are popular with parents in Japan right now, we checked the relevant Japanese statistics which lists names according to their kanji characters.
The top name for girls in Japan, for the second consecutive year, when written in kanji, is 陽葵 which can be pronounced Himari, Hinata or Hina. For boys, one of the fastest rising names in Japan is 律 which is pronounced Ritsu and rose from number 25 to number 4 in 2023, possibly due to the popularity of Japanese footballer Ritsu Dōan. It’s a unisex name, so can also be used for girls.
Of course, because no baby name guide would be complete without guidance from parents on our Baby Names forum, we also checked out some interesting discussions on baby names from Japan.