I am hoping that there may be some particular kanji and/or sounds used in determining if a persons given name is male or female.
asked Mar 17 '17 at 18:55
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For a particular name, namegen.jp/yomikata can give you statistics on whether the name is more probably male or female. – Alexander Z. Sep 27 '19 at 15:03
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very helpful information. – TutorJack-YouTube Sep 28 '19 at 13:23
There are a number of common suffixes you can use to try to guess. Here is an incomplete list of common suffixes which are a pretty safe bet:
Female
- ko 子
- mi 美
- ka 花・華
- e 江・恵
- na 奈・菜
- no 乃
- ri 里
Male
- rō 郎
- ta 太
- suke 介・助・祐
- o 男・夫・雄・生
- ya 哉・也
- kichi 吉
- hiko 彦
- nobu 信
Also, "girly" kanji—like 愛 "love", 幸 "happiness", 華 "flower", 美 "beauty" etc.—or hiragana will usually indicate a girl's name.
Similarly, "boyish" kanji—like 正 "righteous", 健 "health/strength", 勝 "win", 信 "honesty", etc., will usually indicate a boy's name.
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7It should be added that girls names among the elderly today, born before the war, often is written with katakana, whereas men of that age usually used kanji. The reason for this is that katakana was the default kana in that time, whereas now hiragana has the default role and katakana special uses. – a20 Mar 18 '17 at 8:07
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6@bjorn Right, there are many more hints I haven't mentioned. However, if you see an all-katakana name, "probably a woman born before the war" is maybe not a good rule of thumb. – Earthliŋ♦ Mar 18 '17 at 9:44
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1@Earthliŋ Is it okay to guess that many fiction names will trascend these patterns? For instance, I remember character named 忍(shinobu) which was a girl – Felipe Oliveira Mar 30 '17 at 15:57
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3@l'électeur I really think it's ridiculous to downvote this answer, because you found exceptions to a rule of thumb ("a pretty safe bet") from people living in the 8th century or earlier... (Of course everyone's free to vote however they like.) – Earthliŋ♦ Jul 16 '18 at 10:09
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3
There are many examples where it can be absolutely impossible.
Here are two examples:
雅 - Masa (male name) or Miyabi (female name)
幸 - Kou (male name) or Miyuki (female name)
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2
Outside of the name indicating itself whether it's male or female, I find the easiest way to work it out is doing a Google Image search for that name.
However, I'd advise caution about doing this at work. I have a recollection that sometimes the top results for female names involve women who aren't naked, but aren't wearing much more than their underwear. For an example, try doing "Hitomi" in romaji, even with safe search on.
Some online dictionaries indicate whether a name is male or female, such as jisho.org, though you have to tell it you're specifically after names.
answered Mar 18 '17 at 5:39
There is a webservice for determine the gender of a name.
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1It's a neat idea. The counts for Japanese names even romaji seem extremely low. Also, it doesn't mark some names that are clearly possible for either gender (try api.genderize.io/?name=makoto , api.genderize.io/?name=%E8%AA%A0 ) – virmaior Mar 18 '17 at 19:19
