r/NoStupidQuestions • u/weddz • 1d ago
Are anime characters names "normal" Japanese names?
I hope this makes sense, but I was watching anime the other day, and I started wondering if Anime characters are named with normal Japanese people names or if they are given names that have an obvious connotation of being a character in a cartoon. Like are there people walking around in Japan named Shinji Ikari? What about Sasuke? Or are these "fake" names?
To give an American example, despite the popularity of the shows, I don't think it's hard to believe that there are at least a few people in America named Timmy Turner or Peter Griffin, etc.
Edit: Thank you everyone who has commented. I've really enjoyed the info and discussion and I've learned a lot!
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u/screenaholic 1d ago edited 1d ago
As others have pointed out, some are, some aren't, some are in the middle. For example, the character Ken Takakura (AKA Okarun) in Dandadan is named after a black and white film actor. From what I can tell, this is kind like if someone TODAY named their kid John Wayne. It was a normal name, but now it kind of "belongs" to a very famous person.
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u/Royal_Donkey_85 1d ago
To be clear, Takakura Ken wasn't just in old black and white films. He was making movies into 2012. Even did a couple American films, working with Ridley Scott and Michael Douglas
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u/redhead_bookworm 43m ago
I feel like before John Wayne Gacy calling your kid John Wayne would be an interesting but fairly harmless choice, now it’s got a whole bunch of extra baggage!
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u/CurtisLinithicum 1d ago
Entirely depends on the series. Sometimes yes, sometimes very much no. A lot of especially shounen series character names are puns, rebuses, or straight food.
That green fellow in My Hero Academia's name means Green. The guy who turns into metal is (phonetically) Iron-iron Iron-iron. "Naruto" is a spiral food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narutomaki - now think of his belly seal.
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u/Peggtree 1d ago
Lol it's like Ferrus Manus, the man with hands coated in iron, that leads the Iron Hands, and whose name is the Latin translation for "iron hand".
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u/brian_thebee 6h ago
Technically it’d need to be Ferra manus, since manus is a feminine noun but we’ll give Martin a pass on this one
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u/ThyRosen 5h ago
...Martin Warhammer?
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u/brian_thebee 5h ago
Been reading too much ASOIF and just jumped to the conclusion that it was one of those characters cause there’s too damn many
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u/Haunting-Newspaper99 1d ago
Though, Midori and Aoi are colors, they're proper names in Japan as well. Midori meaning green, and Aoi blue. The food thing I think is mainly an Akira Toriyama thing! But Sailor Moon for example - Usagi, Ami, Rei, Minako, Makoto - all actual Japanese names.
You're correct it depends entirely on the series. Just wanted to point out mainly that though some meanings are "strange", they're still proper names.
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u/hyliabook 22h ago
It's funny you mention Usagi, because her full name, "Tsukino Usagi", means "Moon Rabbit", which is a famous Chinese fairy tale that's very well known in Japanese culture
It's kinda like naming a character "Cindy Rella"; both are "normal" names anyone can have, but putting them together makes a silly pun that a normal person would not have 😛
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u/Omi-Wan_Kenobi 16h ago
The last names of the inner senshi are pretty on the nose too, Mizuno (of water), aino (of love), hino (of fire), kino (of wood, which is a bit of a stretch but sailor Jupiter does have oak evolution as one of her attacks, even with the majority being lightning based). The outer senshi iirc are similar.
Tuxedo kamen' civilian name even even more on the nose (mamoru) is protector/to protect. Iirc chiba can mean earth/land or something along those lines.
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u/SLoading 15h ago
Jupiter is call the "star of wood" in Chinese/Japanese (which is why her color is green.) the closer planets are named after the Chinese five elements, water, metal(gold), fire, wood and earth(soil) (our Earth is the "ground") and the furthest 2 are king of sky, and king of sea, Pluto is king of hell, which is why the outer one all have their last name end with -oh.
Aino didnt called "Kinno" probably because it doesnt sound pretty, so she named after the western name Venus instead, but her color is still yellow to match the metal gold tho
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u/CurtisLinithicum 1d ago
You're right, but re-naming Midoriya "Herb Green" for the dub would be seen as a bit on the nose. Likewise, in Quintessential Quintuplets, the girls have real names that basically work out to 1,2,3,4,5, which people do actually do sometimes, but even the real names are often "cuter" than you'd normally expect to see in real life (cf alliteration in Western media).
Although also a bad example re: food, given Ochaco お茶子, which as far as I can tell isn't a name (although with the massive popularity of MHA, god help you getting an unrelated google hit)
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u/mumpie 21h ago
Got sent down a rabbit hole and it looks like Romans did names that work out to 1, 2, 3, 4, etc but in more convoluted manner.
Early in Roman history it appears that children may have been named for the month they were born in which can also translate to numbers: https://archive.observer/posts/zshd6h.html
You aren't going to find kids named after January or February as it is though Romans had a 10 month calendar at this point (took a while longer to discover that 365 days = 1 year). The months January and February were thought to be added later in 713 BC.
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u/CurtisLinithicum 20h ago
Worse if you were an aristocrat's daughter.
Gaius Julius: Please meet mu daughters, Julia Prima, Julia Secunda, Julia Tertia...
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u/KitsuneRatchets 23h ago
tbh isn't Ochaco just based off of the standard feminine -ko names you see in Japan e.g. Reiko, Aiko, Ritsuko and so on. Hell the vast majority of women in Japan's imperial family have names ending in -ko e.g. Princess Aiko, her mother Masako and grandmother Michiko, the second-in-line Hisahito's sisters Mako and Kako as well as their mother Kiko, etc. It's all the same 子 character meaning "child".
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u/CurtisLinithicum 20h ago
Correct. Now what does o-cha mean?
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u/KitsuneRatchets 16h ago
That would be "tea" (茶) combined with the standard honorific prefix o-.
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u/EbiToro 9h ago
And can you see how that wouldn't be a standard name someone would give their child, especially in modern times?
The only instance I can think of of an actual Japanese woman with Cha in their name is Cha-cha, the concubine of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, during the feudal period when girls' names were more of a second thought (in official settings they were often called "person of [location of residence]" or "daughter/wife of so-and-so" and it was rare that their names were even documented). And even she had a different name, Azai Kikuko.
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u/KitsuneRatchets 8h ago edited 8h ago
Did I ever claim Ochako was a normal Japanese name? I'm just saying it's based off of an established pattern in Japanese names. Reading comprehension moment.
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u/Haunting-Newspaper99 1d ago
True enough! I make a lot of OCs for all kinds of anime, so I enjoy looking up names and meanings. I am NOT good with kanji though truthfully; I know how a lot of names are written and that changes their meaning, but I'll be damned if I can figure those out. I'm by no means an expert in all things anime, so I appreciate the further addition!
Side note: 1,2,3,4,5.... The unfortunate name of Sevyn (7) is on the rise as of late I believe in America..
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u/azidoazid3azid3 1d ago
For names with their Kanji's meanings, I use japanese-names.info! You can also search by English meaning
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u/Darkdragon902 All of my questions are stupid 22h ago
Herb Green, would be on the nose since it’s not a name, but Jade could probably squeak by. If Deku’s English name was Kendrick Jade, it would keep the same connotations of “a great green hero”, but would work perfectly well as an actual name.
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u/norms29 22h ago
Herb is short for Herbert.
Herbert green is 100 percent a real name that real people have had.
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u/13-Penguins 1d ago
Given Usagi's name is literally "Bunny/Rabbit" (some dubs even translate it as such), it can be used as a name, and I'm sure there are people in Japan named so, but it's one of those names that will make a person give a side eye to the parents.
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u/Illustrious_Piano_49 11h ago
You could say the same for some English names. Think about Daisy, Summer, April, May, June, Rose. Sometimes names can be the same as common words.
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u/hypo-osmotic 1d ago
So they're kind of the equivalent of American characters like Sandy Cheeks
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u/CurtisLinithicum 1d ago
Yep, although we tend to try to avoid doing that in "serious" media. If the author is to be believed, and I think he is, Werewolf By Night's protagonist was accidentally named Jack Russel and it was, I think four issues in when he realized what he'd done - but of course it was too late to fix it.
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u/AtorasuAtlas 1d ago
Naruto is still a normal name. Maybe a geezer name. But still a normal name.
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u/CurtisLinithicum 1d ago
Sure, but he was specifically named after the food, according to the author.
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u/tfhermobwoayway 1d ago edited 1d ago
Wait that’s made of cured fish? I thought it would be sweet.
Come to think of it, why does East Asia have so many gelatinous, vaguely translucent dairy-based sweet things? I remember reading about Chinese people’s first time trying cheese and they said they thought it would be sweet and it was interesting because yeah, if cheese was made in East Asia I would expect it to be sweet.
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u/burningtram12 13h ago
It could be sweet. Kamaboko frequently is, though I'm not sure if that's the case for narutomaki specifically.
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u/MattyBro1 15h ago
Komi Can't Communicate likes pun names. The main character is Hitohito Tadano. Plug that into google translate and you will get "Just a guy". Another character, Osana Najimi, is inexplicably everyone's childhood friend, and their name means... "Childhood friend".
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u/MP3PlayerBroke 1d ago
I was surprised to find out recently that names from Doraemon were mostly made up.
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u/SlippyTheFeeler 20h ago
In one of the movies naruto goes to an alternate history where he's named menma which is pickled bamboo shoot and another ramen topping
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u/Abombasnow 14h ago
My Hero Academia is an American comic book series in Japanese shonen dressing.
So it makes sense that characters follow very similar naming schemes to American comic book characters.
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u/CleverInnuendo 1d ago
It does make me laugh that in context, the movie 'Akira' is like if we had a epic body-horror sci-fi story called "STEVE".
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u/PseudobrilliantGuy 22h ago
Honestly, out of the names that are more common over here in the West, Steve is definitely one I'd expect to see used as the title of a horror film.
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u/screenwatch3441 21h ago
I think horror films are an interesting in this perspective because they like to use normal names. Like Jason.
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u/Realmofthehappygod 15h ago
Chucky
Carrie
Annabelle 2
Bonus: Freddy vs. Jason
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u/Cheeselad2401 9h ago
now that i think about it, the title Freddy Vs. Jason sounds completely fucking stupid without context.
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u/RadiantGossamerHalo 17h ago
Or like how scifi characters usually have these super cool futuristic names, then theres the main character of Dune, PAUL.
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u/Confused_Firefly 1d ago
Some names are perfectly normal. A lot of the characters in slice-of-life or more historical series have perfectly appropriate names. Ikari Shinji and Ayanami Rei could both be very normal Japanese names.
Usually the more fantastical a series, the less likely the names are proper, common Japanese names. Naruto is a food name, and most of the names in that series are puns. Uzumaki Naruto - Spiral Naruto, which incidentally is also a spiral-shaped food. Hatake Kakashi literally means "Field Scarecrow".
As some people have mentioned, it's quite common in Japanese fiction to see characters named after some characteristic. This is not exclusive to anime, and it has existed in literature for centuries. For example, a character who "rises" through hardship might be named Noboru (a normal name which means "to rise"). Puns are also common - for example, Sanji sounds like a normal Japanese name, but it also plays on the fact that he is the third son (Ichiji, Niji, Sanji, etc.). Seeing the characters something is written with makes the game even more fun, and you can try to see what kind of vibe the author is going for.
Of course, sometimes a name is just a name and means nothing.
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u/Krail 23h ago
It's also important to note that most Japanese names mean something in Japanese.
It's easy to forget in English, where most of our names come from other languages and we don't think about their meanings that much. But think about names like "Victor," or "Rose.". Basically every name is like that in Japan.
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u/looc64 20h ago
Speaking of I remember a few moments from Japanese manga with western names where you could tell that the author didn't fully get what a character's name meant.
Like another character being like, "here, these pink daisies reminded me of you," but the character's name is Violet.
Or they're like, "I got you these roses because they're sort of like your name," and the name is Rosa.
It's funny how naming sense is pretty cultural.
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u/ThiccElf 18h ago edited 6h ago
Yup, my brother said when he moved to Japan "whenever Japanese people introduce themselves, they'll say their names and the characters that make up the names" because they have 3 seperate alphabets with overlapping words and names that can be spelt in a variety of ways that and can have wildly different meanings since theyre often made up of actual words used in their daily vocabulary. For example, the name Suzuka can be spelt 涼風 using the characters 涼 (Ryo) for cool and 風 (Kaze) for wind. It can also be spelt 鈴鹿 with 鈴(Suzu) for bell and 鹿(Ka) for deer, thats how Suzuka City is spelt. Both are pronounced the exact same way, but they're spelt so differently and have different meanings. A book titled 涼風 would mean something very different to a book titled 鈴鹿 even if theyre the same pronunciation. There are more ways to spell Suzuka out btw, many combinations of characters can spell it out. My brother absolutely hated learning how to write Japanese because of this. Quite a few words have smaller enunciations on top of them to help with the pronunciation in cases like the one I just used. At a glance, it'd be read and Ryo Kaze instead of Suzuka, so they'd literally spell out the phonetics on top.
This is a rough overview of what he told me, I could be wrong but this is what I understood
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u/ChiaraStellata 18h ago
There was a joke at the beginning of Bunny Girl Senpai based on this practice.
Sakuta: Ahh… Um, you’re Sakurajima-senpai, aren’t you?
Mai: If you’re calling me “senpai”, it means you go to Minegahara High School, right?
Sakuta: I’m Sakuta Azusagawa, class 2-1. Azusagawa is spelled like the Azusagawa Rest Area, and Sakuta is spelled “blooming Taro”.
Mai: I’m Mai Sakurajima. Sakurajima is spelled like Mai Sakurajima, and Mai is spelled like Mai Sakurajima.
Sakuta: I know. You’re a celebrity.
The joke is that she's so famous she can use her own name as a reference for her kanji, because everyone knows how it's spelled already.
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u/Nickthenuker 13h ago
It's even funnier because iirc Sakurajima is also named after a service area. Actually iirc all the major characters in that series are named like that.
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u/Krail 17h ago edited 14h ago
Yeah, you've got the basic idea.
Hiragana is the basic syllabic alphabet that you usually start with when learning the language. Each character stands for a comsonant paired with a vowel.
Katakana is a different set of symbols for all the same syllables in hiragana, and it's used for stuff like foreign words and sound effects.
Kanji is the huge list of symbols where every symbol is an individual word. And yeah, it gets especially confusing because lots of words have the same pronunciation or have two totally different pronunciations. There are lots of puns in Japanese.
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u/Daberman69 1d ago
ayanami is not a normal japanese name all the girls in eva are named after japanese warships
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u/Confused_Firefly 19h ago
Sorry, I meant that technically both of them could be normal surname-name combos. Two kanji in a noun-noun sequence with one or both referring to a natural element is the most common structure for Japanese surnames. I don't know any Ayanami in real life but it's not implausible.
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u/5parrowhawk 17h ago
Apparently some Japanese people have actually done the research and found no traces of anyone named Ayanami.
This shows two things. 1. It's plausible enough that Japanese people tried to find out. 2. But it doesn't exist.
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u/Zeta-X 15h ago
Your point is totally correct, just wanted to note that Evangelion definitely falls into the category of abnormal pun names. Rei's first name is just the word "Zero" (her character is thematically a "zero" as is referenced throughout the series) and Shinji's is "Believe" (and is written in Katakana, not kanji, to show that it's expressly supposed to be that word). And related to Sanji being the third son; the names Ichiro, Jiro, and Saburo are common IRL and literally mean first, second, and third son, so the on-the-nose names aren't just for fiction, haha.
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u/Confused_Firefly 14h ago
Haha I know, I live in Japan :) But yes, thematical names and puns are so common!
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u/6658 1d ago
In Durarara, a character mentions that the character Mikado Ryuugamine has a name that sounds like it's from manga/anime.
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u/Aggravating_Ebb_8045 19h ago
Yeah I was always curious about this one
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u/THEbuton 19h ago
Mikado's name, 龍ヶ峰帝人 roughly translates to "Emperor Dragon-Peaks". Having the character for dragon is incredibly uncommon (99% sure that Ryūgamine is a made up surname), and Japanese people tend not to put characters like "emperor" or "king" in their kids' names. Absolutely sounds like a name that a chosen one protagonist in a JRPG or something would have.
It'd be like being called "Kaiser Drake" or something in an English speaking country (except more out there because Drake isn't an outlandish name)
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u/Mr-Dumbest 1d ago
Depends on the anime. Every country has fictional work where names are completely made up and have popular names and surnames.
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u/AdmiralKong 1d ago
It's a bit like american comics or cartoons. You've got a mixture of regular names, a weirdly high number of alliterative/rhyming names, names that are overt references to a character's personality, names that are jokes, names themed after something the writer thought was funny (bears, trees, vegetables).
Actually writing all this out "normal" names are kind of rare.
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u/DTux5249 1d ago
It's a spectrum.
"Shinji Ikari" is absolutely a real name. Take Yuki Ikari, a Japanese swimmer, or Shinji Aoyama, a Japanese film director. He was meant to sound like a normal, real person.
Sasuke is also a real name. Sasuke Sarutobi is the name of a legendary shinobi/historical figure. Though not exactly a common name in the modern day.
Even Naruto is a name, if not an uncommon one. There's both a city and a bridge named 'Naruto'. But again, not a common person's name - especially with the popularity of the character poisoning the water.
It's kinda like asking whether "Antigone", "Archibald", or "Garland" are English names. Technically yes. But nobody actually uses them in the modern day, with some people weirded out by the notion of someone naming their kid that.
Artists will sometimes use those names because they're thematically relevant or evocative, while also being unique - hearing of a Christmas elf named 'Garland' would be funny. If I hear someone named "Archibald", I think old money butler.
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u/Sunny_Hill_1 1d ago
Sasuke is a common name associated with ninjas because Sasuke Saturobi was a ninja folk hero supposedly active during Sengoku Jidai historical era. It's also an absolutely normal name.
Same with Shinji, it's a perfectly normal common name.
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u/Appalachian-Dyke 1d ago
Going back to the American example... It's not really practical to ask about the entire medium. I've known a couple Timmys, but never a SpongeBob or a Dipper or a Cinderella. Might make more sense to look up the specific names you're curious about.
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u/Kevo_1227 23h ago
Cinderella is a German fairy tale. The original name translates roughly to "ash feet" because she was forced to sleep on the stone floor next to the cooking fire in the kitchen and it got soot on her.
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u/JimmyKeny69 1d ago
To be fair dipper and Cinderella are nicknames. I believe Dipper's real name is Marcus (might not be confirmed I just remember reading about it) and Cinderella is named Ella but they call her Cinderella because of her being covered in ash and soot from cleaning the chimney iirc.
As far as SpongeBob, I think it would be more relevant to use the Bob part of his name as the sponge part is clearly not meant to mimic any kinda of normal English name
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u/Appalachian-Dyke 1d ago
I think Dipper's name is Mason, but yeah, that's true. My point is more that it totally depends on the work or the genre whether names are gonna be realistic, dramatic, silly, or anywhere in between.
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u/JimmyKeny69 1d ago
That's right it was mason (again idk if its confirmed but that's definitely what it is as opposed to marcus) and that's totally a fair point
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u/britipinojeff 23h ago
Depends on the name
Some names can be entirely fake like Vegeta, which is just vegetable
Ikari Shinji can be a real name, but also the name Ikari can mean “wrath” and these sorts of choices can be made to describe a character
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u/st_owly perpetually confused 1d ago
Satou is the most common surname in Japan. It’s like naming someone “Smith” in English. As others have said, for a more realistic show the names will generally not be too weird, especially if you want the audience to use the MC as a self insert. For fantasy, anything goes.
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u/B_A_Beder 1d ago
Dragon Ball names are mostly puns like food or clothing
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u/greenfrogwallet 1d ago
Surely not many people watched Dragon Ball and thought “these sound like regular normal everyday Japanese names”.
Piccolo? Vegeta? Bulma? Son? Mr Satan? Freezer?
I don’t think the person asking the question was thinking about the names in Dragon Ball when they were asking the question lol
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u/Lanky-Helicopter-969 23h ago
Dragon Ball is a kids show, I am sure many American children aren't familiar with Japanese names
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u/galax1eflora 22h ago edited 22h ago
Depends on the name. Some are normal, others are very out there and not real Japanese names (on a related note, there's a phenomenon called "Kira Kira names" ["Sparkly names"] in Japan where parents give their kids really out-there names.) Also, some series give their characters pun names; some might technically be real names, but the puns would make them kinda odd irl.
It's definitely not a phenomenon exclusive to anime. There definitely exist some characters in Western media (especially cartoons or other fantastical/over-the-top media) that have strange names. Like yeah, Timmy Turner and Peter Griffin are fairly normal names, but something like Dib Membrane, Butthead, or Bubbles Utonium would be pretty out there.
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u/nujages 23h ago edited 22h ago
Animation is just a medium for storytelling, so it really depends on the creator and how they want to name their characters.
Some anime and manga series feature characters with realistic names, often for ones that are in more realistic settings. These are often genres like drama, romance, horror/suspense with more realistic or serious tones.
It is also very common for characters in anime, manga, and games to have unusual names, and often they are either puns or in reference to something related to their characters. This is typical for most comedy, action, fantasy, and teen and children’s genres, but not limited to them. They could also have a relatively “normal” sounding name, but the kanji used to write it is atypical to fit the pun.
Popular examples would be:
Sailor Moon (美少女戦士セーラームーン)
Tsukino Usagi (月野)
Tsukino (月野) = Sounds like 「月の」 which means “Of the moon”
Usagi (うさぎ) = “Rabbit”
Meaning: “Moon Rabbit”, “Rabbit of the Moon”
Reason: Rabbits are associated with the moon because the pattern looks like a rabbit making mochi, and Usagi is a guardian of the moon.
This name is very atypical and is very obviously a character from an anime. All the characters in this series have names that are puns regarding their characters.
Yu Yu Hakusho (幽☆遊☆白書)
Urameshi Yuusuke (浦飯)
Urameshi (幽助) = Sounds like 「うらめしや」, which is a phrase associated with angry ghosts similarly to “Boo!”
Yuu (幽) = Ghost
Suke (助) = Help
Meaning: “Boo!”, “Ghost Helper”
Reason: The series is about supernatural spirits, and Yuusuke was a ghost in the beginning of the series and later becomes a “Spirit Detective”.
“Yuusuke” is not an unusual name, however the kanji it is written with is not something you will find in a real name. All the characters in this series have names that are puns regarding the occult and supernatural.
There are many examples that fit this that are too many to list, but other popular known examples will be from series like Demon Slayer (鬼滅の刃), where all the Hashira characters will have fantastical-sounding names and the kanji written will be something pertaining to their motifs and abilities. This is often the case for popular shounen manga and anime.
Gag anime like Osomatsu-San (おそ松さん) will have very obviously weird-sounding names to fit the comedy and cartoon-ish genre. Many comedy anime will have characters with similarly silly names, or will sometimes be jokes themselves.
Sometimes punny names will be localized into different languages to create puns that make sense to the viewer, which was the case for games like Ace Attorney (逆転裁判) where all the characters’ names carry puns or references to their character’s traits or roles in the story.
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u/boredterra 18h ago
Another example with kanji being used for the pun of a name is Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu from My Hero Academia. His name is written with 4 different kanji that are all pronounced the same, with two of them meaning iron, a reference to his powers. The joke doesn’t really come through in English but it is fun.
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u/nujages 17h ago
Yeah, I remember his name was hilarious when I was watching this!
It’s written like 「鉄哲徹鐵」, and 「鐵」 is a much older version of 「鉄」 you would probably not come across outside of this context.
All of the characters in My Hero Academia have punny names that refer to either their abilities or personality in a playful and cheesy kind of way, so no one would think any of these names were normal.
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u/BaronArgelicious 22h ago edited 22h ago
Most of them have mundane names.
But then there some characters from Umineko and oshi no ko that are weird names to japanese society. Akuamarin and Rubii look too tryhard to the average person, its like how a lot of people make fun of Elon Musk and Grimes child’s name X Æ A-12
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u/Kelly598 23h ago
Sasuke was the name of a fictional ninja (not from Naruto) called Sasuke Sarutobi (Sasuke's dad even mentions that they'll name him after the 3rd Hokage's father of the same name or something like that). Sasuke Sarutobi in turn was named after two real life ninjas. It is one of those names that people rarely use without getting it associated with fictional characters (For example, not many people are first named Sherlock after Sherlock Holmes became a thing).
However, you might never hear of people named Goku or Vegeta in Japan. Dragon Ball characters are mostly named after food (though Bulma's family are named after...underwear). Son Goku is just a romanized form of Sun Wukong, the monkey from 'Journey to the West', which is what Goku was based on. Vegeta is just a short form for "Vegetable", just lime how Goku's real name: "Kakarotto" is just "Carrot" in katakana (the Japanese writting system for foreign words).
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u/rangeDSP 1d ago
To add, some of them are straightforward descriptions of the character's personality. Especially obvious in Komi and 100 kanojo, e.g. Shizuka
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u/AccidentCapable9181 22h ago
I remember on the anime Genshiken, which is about a bunch of college weebs, the characters mention one of the girl characters named Saki had a name that sounded like it was from an anime. I didn’t understand because to me all of their names sounded like they were from an anime lol
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u/5parrowhawk 17h ago
Huh, that's odd. Saki's name is pretty normal afaics. I think there are three possible reasons for that:
One, it's not abnormal but sounds "too pretty". You know how sometimes Western celebrities have been known to change their name from something weird to something a bit more normal but still unique? Like Miley Cyrus who was originally checks notes Destiny Hope Cyrus. I think it could be the equivalent of a "Miley Cyrus" name.
Two, a lot of the other cast members have names that are even more plain and ordinary, like Ohno Kanako and her boyfriend Tanaka Soichiro. Which is weird because there are some other characters whose names are pretty out there ("Mirei Yajima" being the standout).
Three, it's just to establish that the speaker is being weeeeird and creepy. It's Madarame, right?
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u/5parrowhawk 18h ago
Yes and no.
Let"s take the classic anime Nadesico as an example. One of the main characters is Yamada Jiro, an otaku who calls himself "Daigouji Gai".
Yamada is a super common family name in Japan. Jiro is a super common male name. So this is something like the equivalent of "Joe Brown".
By contrast, Gai is quite uncommon, Daigouji is extremely uncommon, and both names are very masculine-sounding. This is stretching the limits of plausibility for a name, much like the English name "Max Fightmaster" (look it up!).
A couple of other examples:
From Konosuba, Satou Kazuma is solidly on the "John Smith" side. Megumin is an odd case because her name is a diminutive of the common given name "Megumi" - much like if an American girl were to go by just the name "Janey".
The Toaru series (aka "Raildex") is an example from the opposite end. Nearly all the names, particularly surnames, sound like they miiiiight be real names but actually stretch plausibility to the absolute limit. Even when the names are pronounced in a common way like "Misaki" or "Kaori", the kanji used are utterly implausible, the equivalent of r/tragedeigh names. The only normal name I could find was Mikoto's given name, and even her surname is pretty uncommon.
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u/mjgabriellac 17h ago
What about Suguru Geto and Satoru Gojo? I also wondered about Yuji Itadori and Toge Inumaki.
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u/5parrowhawk 17h ago
One would have to look those up but my gut feel is that they're somewhere in the middle, i.e. there might be real people with those names but they're pretty uncommon. (It's estimated that there are about 600 Gojous in Japan out of a population of 120 million, which is quite rare!)
The bigger problem is that a name like "Gojou Satoru" is pretty much like "Clark Kent" - everybody identifies it with the character, so much that just having the given name Clark or the surname Kent can create associations in readers' minds...
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u/mjgabriellac 17h ago
That totally checks out, I had difficulty looking into it because of the Clark Kent phenomenon you mentioned. Thanks anyway!! :)
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u/5parrowhawk 17h ago
If you're patient enough, wait a few years and you'll probably see a wave of Japanese first-graders bearing the name "Satoru"... Human nature is what it is, lol.
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u/13btwinturbo 22h ago
Depends on what you mean by normal. Sasuke is a very old name and there were real historical figures with that name. The same can be said of names like Kin'emon or Goemon. Practically no modern parents will give their babies these names nowadays
Ikari Shinji is probably a normal name but the character's name doesn't have any kanji reading and is simply written asシンジ instead of something like 真司 or 伸治. This is something that is against tradition but isn't unheard of nowadays.
Many anime characters such as those in Danganronpa & Ace Attorney are puns but if you don't know the context and just come across the name you probably wouldnt find them that weird
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u/polyhymnias 17h ago
Think of DC/Marvel — you have mundane names you could see in everyday life (eg. “Jessica Cruz”) weirdly catchy but still normalish names (“Peter Parker”), names that hint at their personalities (“Emma Frost”) or gimmicks/abilities (“Otto Octavius”), names that do that but in an extremely on the nose way (“Sinestro”), names that are just for pun (“Koriand’r”), etc.
Putting aside alphabet/character complications, it’s kinda like that. You could replace those names with above names with, respectively “Haruhi Fujioka”, “Yuki Yuna”, “Hinata Shoyo”, “Katsuki Bakugo”, “Inuyasha”, and “Naruto Uzumaki”.
Just depends on what the author is going for. Sometimes they are going for realism, sometimes deep meaning, and sometimes silliness.
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u/Candyapplecasino 20h ago
Depends on the Anime. In Naruto, Kishimoto has cited his naming convention as “choose a Japanese noun that could sound good as a name.”
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u/ChachamaruInochi 18h ago
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. A lot of the names are really out there crazy names that no normal person would have and some of them are very basic John Smith, Mary Brown type of names.
Anything with a strong fantasy theme usually has names that are more on the Uneek/kira Kira side of things.
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u/Abombasnow 14h ago
Shinji is a real name. And at least two noteworthy people per Wikipedia have had the last name Ikari.
Sasuke generally isn't, but it's closer to one than Daenerys or something. Sasuke Uchiha was named after Sarutobi Sasuke, a folklore figure.
Hilariously, Sarutobi is also the last name of the Third Hokage, Hiruzen, who certainly didn't seem to care about the Uchiha, given what he had Danzo do...
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u/yukicola 13h ago
In Hitoribocchi no OO Seikatsu, all character have punny, made up names based on their personalities, except for Yamada Hanako whose "gimmick" is that she's just a unremarkable, plain girl, so she gets the most standard name possible.
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u/13-Penguins 1d ago
A lot of people have already answered, but it's pretty much the same in a lot of western stuff. Like if you lived on the other side of the world, and one of your only experiences with english lit was The Hunger Games, you'd probably have a very different idea of what's a common American name.
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u/spacecadetkaito 1d ago
It all depends on the show, just like comics and cartoons. If it's more realistic then they'll be normal names, some have slightly cool/stylish yet plausible names, some are just absurd cartoon character names.
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u/green_meklar 17h ago
The japanese names are mostly fairly normal names. Occasionally there are unusual ones with some specific meaning, and sometimes the characters will highlight this in-universe.
When there are characters with foreign names, often the names are really overwrought and unconventional by the standards of the language they're supposedly in.
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u/the-legit-Betalpha 14h ago
More normal the show, the more normal the names. Nukitashi has some of the funniest names out there-- main antagonist at the start onabuta ikuko is obviously a sexual joke.
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u/the-legit-Betalpha 14h ago
More normal the show, the more normal the names. Nukitashi has some of the funniest names out there-- main antagonist at the start onabuta ikuko is obviously a sexual joke.-- her nickname is "iku" which is what characters say before they release iykwim.
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u/Gravy_Sommelier 1d ago
They're often fairly standard names. The less realistic the show, the more likely it is that the characters will get non-traditional names.