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I'm in the midst of creating a show flyer for an upcoming event and one of the artists uses the name "Bakka!" (without quotes)

I'm aware that the real word for this is Baka, so I'm curious as to how it would affect the spelling of it with two K's?

And, as hyperworm suggested, I'm curious how this affects the meaning of it by having two K's?

If anyone could shine some light on this for me I would greatly appreciate it, thank you!

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I don't really feel qualified to answer questions here, but I do know that a (colloquial?) shortening of ばかり is ばっか, so that's a possibility. – atlantiza Jan 9 '12 at 20:28
istrasci's answer handles your question perfectly as asked, but I get the impression that "I'm curious how it would affect the spelling of it" wasn't your intention, and that you actually meant to say "I'm curious how it [the meaning] would be affected by the spelling of it with two K's"... – Hyperworm Jan 9 '12 at 20:35
I hadn't actually considered how the meaning would be affected. What exactly is the consequence? – Jassi Jan 9 '12 at 20:44
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Well, just because the two words look and sound similar does not mean that they are the same. Even in English, words that sound exactly the same can have different meanings (their/they're/there, red (the color)/read (past tense of to read), etc.) – atlantiza Jan 9 '12 at 20:47

1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote accepted
  • Baka = ばか、バカ、or 馬鹿【ばか】
  • Bakka = ばっか or バッカ

BTW, the second part of your question could be considered off-topic and may be edited out.

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Thank you very much! Out of the two you provided for Bakka, are they different character sets? If so, which would you consider more 'general' or used more often? – Jassi Jan 9 '12 at 20:45
Also, as @Hyperworm mentioned in a comment up above.. has the meaning altered drastically by adding that second K in? – Jassi Jan 9 '12 at 20:45
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Baka means "idiot" or "fool". "Bakka" just sounds like an emphasis of "Baka". However, if you say that one of the artists goes by "Bakka", that doesn't imply it has any relation to "Baka", or even any meaning at all. It could be something completely different. As an example, in Japanese you'd say "Bakku appu" for "backup". It could be just a contraction of that. Unless you specifically know something about the artist, I wouldn't try to extract any meaning from it. – istrasci Jan 9 '12 at 21:01
"Out of the two you provided for Bakka, are they different character sets?" -- Yes, ばっか is Hiragana and バッカ is Katakana. – istrasci Jan 9 '12 at 21:02
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I agree with istrasci that it could mean entirely different, but バックアップ wouldn't be contracted to バッカ. A likely alternative is ばっか 'only', the contracted/colloquial form of ばかり. But who knows? Jassi has no idea what it is, but presupposing it is related to 馬鹿. What can we do about it? The source may not even be written by a native Japanese. – sawa Jan 9 '12 at 21:11
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