Japanese Name Generator

A Japanese name has two parts: the family name comes first and the given name second, as in Tanaka Hiroshi, although in English the order is often reversed. There are well over 100,000 family names in Japan, the most common being Sato, Suzuki and Takahashi. Given names are chosen by the parents and written in kanji, Chinese characters whose meaning matters as much as their sound. The same name can be written with different kanji, so Haruto may mean “sun soaring” or “spring person”, and some names can be read in several ways.

Click “Male names” or “Female names”, and the generator gives you ten random names, each made of one of about 1,000 Japanese family names and one of about 1,000 male or 860 female given names. The names are written in Latin letters, without kanji. They are a good start for a character in a story, a game or a role-play, for a username or a pet name. Click again for ten new names. The names are picked in your browser, and nothing is sent anywhere.