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I have the following sentence I need to translate for my introductory Japanese class.

私の友達の名前は、安田味子さんといいます。

There are 2 parts I am having trouble with.

First, the name translation. I think it should be something like Mr/Ms Yasuda Ajiko. When I type "Yasuda" in hiragana, my computer translates it to the correct kanji. However, the "Ajiko" doesn't get the right kanji, making me think that it is not the correct translation.

The second issue is the sentence as a whole. I know the first part is "the name of my friend". And then the second part I think is "say it is Yasuda Ajiko". But these 2 parts of the sentence don't really go together into a good English sentance. "I say the name of my friend is Yasuda Ajiko"?

Any help is appreciated.

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  • 2
    (1) first names are only recognized by your IME in the most standard cases. (2) I have never heard 味子 before, but I'd tend to read it みこ.
    – Earthliŋ ♦
    May 4, 2013 at 19:29
  • 中国語の"我的名字叫~"に似てる・・・??
    – user1016
    May 5, 2013 at 0:13
  • @ちょこれーと 確かにそやけど、中国語でのおても、もっと英語に近いロマンス諸語でも全部この形を取りまんねんで。
    – user4032
    Dec 12, 2013 at 0:11
  • @l'électeur 「我叫~~」や「Ich heiße ~~」はいいですけど、中国語では「我的名字叫~~」という、「私の名前は～～と呼ばれます」のような形がありますよね。「Mein Name heißt ~」「My name is called ~」みたいなのはあまり見ないと思うんですか、ロマンス諸言語では全部その形が普通なんですか？
    – Chocolate ♦
    Nov 29, 2015 at 7:40
  • ロマンス言語では、正確には中国語の「我的名字叫~~」と同様ではなく、「主語 + 再帰代名詞 + 動詞 + （名前）」（← ロマンス言語語順）の形で表現するのが最も自然です。この動詞が英語の"to call"に相当します。要するに、ロマンス言語においては、人・物の名称を言い表す際に、英語のように"(One's/its) name is ~~"という形を取らず、より動詞らしい動詞を使用するというのが発言の趣旨でした。舌足らずでごめんチャイナ。
    – user4032
    Nov 29, 2015 at 10:07

2 Answers 2

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味子(あじこ?) is such a weird name... As @Earthliŋ has pointed out in his comment it might be read as みこ. I'd rather expect みこ (as a girl's name) to be spelled as 美子, 実子 or something, though.

The といいます (its plain form is という) means "と呼ばれている", "to be called/named". See No.1 in プログレッシブ和英中辞典「という」.

私の友達の名前は、安田味子さんといいます。

might look redundant but actually we often use 「～～の名前は～～といいます」, and I don't think it's regarded ungrammatical.

私の友達の名前は、安田味子さんといいます。
私の友達は、安田味子さんといいます。
私の友達の名前は、安田味子さんです。

All of the above sound alright to me. Compare:

私の名前は、安田味子と申します。(申します is the humble form of 言います.)
ねえ、名前、[何]{なん}ていうの？("What's your name?"--casual/friendly)
その[方]{ほう}、[名]{な}は[何]{なん}と　いう/[申]{もう}す？(archaic)

　

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For the first part of your question, family names (or surnames) are often recognized by your computer... but first names (or given names) are not always recognized. There are a lot of possible character combinations for first names... so your computer will not always know the correct character combination for a specific first name.

As long as the characters on your computer end up matching up to the actual characters of the first name you are typing (and this might take multiple tries at finding the right characters,) don't worry about if the computer doesn't "guess" the correct characters on the first try!

For the second part of your question, you could try translating your sentence like this (literal version:)

"My friend's name is (called) Mr/Mrs Ajiko Yasuda."

Or simply:

"My friend is called Mr/Mrs Ajiko Yasuda."

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