Names

So, the coolest thing about Japanese people is there names. Names like Haneda, Suzuki, Nakayama, Tanaka. What's so cool about these names? Well like most names in cultures (I would assume) the names have meaning behind them. And in Japanese, the way you decipher these meanings is by simply looking at the kanzi characters (basically pictures) that make up the persons name.

So let's look at Tanaka. In Japanese, it is written 田中。 The first symbol means field or rice patty, and the second symbol means in the middle of. Thus, if your name is Tanaka, it means you are in the middle of a field...lol. Nakayama, 中山, means in the middle of a mountain. And Nakamura, 中村, means in the middle of the village. So it's pretty cool to see the meaning of the person's name just by looking at how they write it. You can't really make the connection that Wald means forest just by looking at the letters w,a,l, and d very easily...

So this same logic applies to places as well. 東京, Tokyo, actually means eastern lantern, and 京都　means lantern city, or something of the sort. I think Sapporo, 札幌 means frozen river or something like that, I learned it when I first got here but forgot...oops.

So, the meaning of a Japanese name is derived from the symbols used to write it. Now this story is a little old, but we were talking about Japanese names in my Kanji class last semester, and my kanji teacher told us a pretty funny story. Her mother, was born on 3/7, and (according to my kanji teacher) her parents were lazy, so they named her mina. Mi means 3, and na means 7 in Japanese, so her name was literally 37 (three seven). She didn't show us what characters were used to write it, but I have to admit I thought it was pretty funny.

Now I'm going to be even more shallow, and talk about the names of some of the students in my class. Now I realize making fun of someones name isn't the nicest thing to do, but come on, it's just for giggles. The class with the best names last semester was by far my Japanese writing class.

So lets start things off with a guy whose name sounded like imdaunkyou. Or, when you slow it down a little bit, I'ma dunk you lol. Every time the professor called for attendance at the beginning of class and said his name, I just got this mental image of 2 kids in a pool and one of them yelling that. Always brought a smile to my face...

Next up is probably my favorite, tincock. Well you already know where this is going, the latter half of his name means penis in English. What you might not know however, is that tin, also means penis in Japanese. So this poor fellow's name means penis in 2 languages...I can't help but laugh a little when I think about what kanzi characters are used to write his name....

So there were some other funny names in the class but those two are all I remember, and all I care to write about right now. Now if my name means something funny in another language, I would most certainly find it funny. It's just coincidence that language overlap sometimes, and if you don't stop to enjoy it for a minute, I think your missing out on some of the fun of studying foreign languages.

So I guess Monday in Japanese, getuyoubi, is super close to a Russian cuss word. Tuesday is as well, but whenever someone says Monday you can usually see the Russians in the room smirking a little bit. Sougei, pronounced basically soo gay, means to see someone off, and meet them when they return. Keiseiki is super close to basically the worst swear word in the Korean language. It's really amazing how often these language overlap, despite being completely different from one another...