Gender in Japanese Names Today
Ivona Barešová
Francis Bond
Palacký University Olomouc
Gender in Japanese Names Today
Ivona Barešová and Francis Bond
Olomouc 2026
This research was supported by the Czech Science Foundation [grant number 22-08916S].
Reviewed by: James Breen, BSc., MBA, PhD.
Giancarla Unser-Schutz, PhD., MA, BA
Unauthorised use of this work is an infringement of copyright and may give rise to civil, administrative or criminal liability.
1st edition
© Ivona Barešová, Francis Bond, 2026
© Palacký University in Olomouc, 2026
DOI: 10.5507/ff.26.24465500
ISBN 978-80-244-6550-0 (print)
ISBN 978-80-244-6551-7 (online: iPDF)
ISBN 978-80-244-6782-5 (online: ePub)
5
5.4 Summary
6
6.1 A
6.1.1 Trends
6.1.2 Trends
6.3 Summary
7
7.2 Overall
7.3.1 Length
7.3.2 Gender-Specific
7.4.1 Choice
7.4.3 Gender-Specific
7.5 Final
7.6 One-Kanji
7.7 How
7.8 Summary:
8
8.1.3 Origin
8.2 Why
8.3 Summary
9
9.1 Individuality
Foreword
This book represents the culmination of a three-year research project focused on the phenomenon of gender-neutral names in Japan. As the principal investigator, I had the privilege of working closely with a dedicated team of researchers, particularly Tereza Nakaya and Martin Šturdík from the Department of Asian Studies, and Klára Machů from the Department of Psychology at Palacký University Olomouc. Throughout this project, we sought to deepen our understanding of the linguistic characteristics, social perceptions, and evolving trends surrounding gender-neutral names in contemporary Japan.
Over the course of the project, we published several studies that explore different facets of this topic. Together with Vladimír Matlach from Palacký University’s Department of General Linguistics, we analyzed the phonological and semantic features that signal gender and shape gender perception (Barešová et al., 2024). We also examined gender-neutral names themselves, identifying their linguistic characteristics and the mechanisms that influenced their development (Barešová & Nakaya, 2025). In a qualitative study, we investigated how individuals with gender-neutral names perceive and experience their names over time (Barešová et al., 2025). We further explored how Japanese high-school students perceive gender-neutral names and how open they are to names that deviate from traditional gender norms (Barešová & Machů, 2025). Finally, we analyzed the motivations behind choosing gender-neutral names and found that while gender awareness plays
Gender in Japanese Names Today
a role, parents often select such names unintentionally, guided instead by personal criteria and aspirations (Barešová & Nakaya, 2025). Parts of these studies, including their methods and findings, are incorporated into this book (particularly in chapters 7 and 8) and further developed to offer additional insights.
This book was created in collaboration with my colleague Francis Bond. Together, we combined several data sources to compensate for the lack of comprehensive nationwide data and to present a clearer picture of contemporary trends in diversity and gender expression in Japanese naming. We hope this book offers a more nuanced perspective on naming practices in Japan and provides useful insights into the broader sociolinguistic dynamics of names and gender in contemporary society. Thanks to Francis, it is accompanied by a website that gives access to the interactive datasets used and allows for further exploration of not only gender expression, but also other phenomena related to given names.
The research project and this book would not have been possible without the generous support and collaboration of many individuals and institutions. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Francis Bond, alongside my colleagues Tereza Nakaya, Klára Machů, Martin Šturdík, and Vladimír Matlach for their unwavering commitment and invaluable contributions throughout the project. I am also very grateful to Yuji Nakaya for his help and support in organizing our research activities.
My thanks go as well to Jane Pilcher, sociologist and Honorary Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at the University of the West of England, Bristol, with whom we collaborated on the special issue Dis/Continuity in the Representation of Gender in Names Across Cultures (2025), which also influenced this book. I am also grateful to the reviewers Giancarla Unser-Schutz and Jim Breen: Giancarla for her thorough and constructive feedback which
helped us enhance the text and Jim for his valuable comments on both the manuscript and the accompanying website.
I extend my appreciation to Palacký University Olomouc for providing the institutional support that made this research possible. I would also like to acknowledge the support of the Czech Grant Foundation (grant number 22-08916S), whose financial assistance was instrumental in enabling this project.
Ivona Barešová
Editorial Note
This book uses the Hepburn system of romanization for Japanese words and names. Long vowels are indicated with macrons (e.g., Tarō) to aid accurate pronunciation, except in cases where a word –such as Tokyo or Showa era (properly transcribed as Tōkyō and Shōwa, respectively) – has an established English spelling. The names of Japanese authors of publications in English are presented in the transcription style used in the original publication. Japanese words are italicized, except for those that are more commonly used in English. For example, moji is italicized, whereas kanji, hiragana, and katakana, which are more familiar to English readers, are not. Japanese given names that are discussed in the text or presented as examples are also italicized.
We generally refer to the written form of a name as its graphic form and to its pronunciation as its phonological form. As will be explained in Section 3.2, a Japanese name written in kanji can often be read in more than one way. When examples of names are listed, only one or two of the most common readings (phonological forms) are provided, unless the aim is specifically to show multiple possible readings.
A Note on Terminology
As the title suggests, the two main keywords in this book are “name” and “gender.” To refer to the name given to a child at birth, this book uses the term “given name” rather than “first name” or “forename.” Although “first name” and “forename” do not necessarily imply the initial position in a full name (according to ICOS onomastic terminology), “given name” seems more appropriate in the Japanese context, where the family name typically appears first. The terms “family name” and “surname” are used interchangeably. Unless otherwise specified, “name” refers to the given name. The term “gender” is used here as a broad umbrella concept encompassing both gender and sex (see Haig, 2004). While these terms are not interchangeable – sex typically denotes biological characteristics, and gender refers to the social, cultural, and psychological aspects of being male, female, or nonbinary – they are closely related, and both aspects are often relevant. The term “sex” is reserved for contexts where biological classification is specifically relevant, such as identifying the sex of a newborn.
A Brief Introduction to Japanese Writing
One of the authors of this book previously worked at NTT, the Japanese telecommunications company. At the time, the laboratory had developed a support system for Japanese telegram operators. When a customer called to send a telegram and said, for example, “I would like to send a telegram to Mr Shirai,” the system retrieved all possible names pronounced Shirai (there are at least six variants)1 and ordered them by frequency. The system then prompted the operator with disambiguation questions: How many characters does the name have? Does the first character mean “white”? Does the second character mean “well”? By guiding the operator through these questions, the system reduced entry errors and sped up name input by more than 50 percent. The fact that this system was needed shows how complicated the relation is in Japanese between the spoken and written forms of names. Japanese has a distinctive and intricate writing system. Modern written Japanese uses three main scripts: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Latin letters and Arabic numerals are also used in certain contexts, but they are not permitted in Japanese personal names (see Section 3.1).
1 白井, 市来, 白居, 白飯, 志良以, 白猪
A Brief Introduction to Japanese Writing
Kanji are morphographic characters that represent meaning as well as sound. They were originally borrowed from China, although some additional characters were later created in Japan. Each kanji typically has multiple possible readings, generally classified as:
▪ on’yomi (Sino-Japanese readings derived historically from Chinese pronunciations),
▪ kun’yomi (native Japanese readings), and
▪ nanori (special readings used only in names).
For example, the character 花 ‘flower’ can be read /hana/ (kun-reading) or /ka/ or /ke/ (on-readings). In contemporary given names, it is also frequently read /na/. In addition, many characters have both traditional and simplified variants (cf. 櫻 – 桜 for sakura).
Hiragana and katakana – collectively known as kana – are phonographic scripts. Each character represents a fixed sound unit (more precisely, a mora). Although the two scripts encode the same sound inventory, they differ in shape and usage. For example:
▪ ka: か (hiragana), カ (katakana)
▪ ki: き, キ
▪ sa: さ, サ
▪ n: ん, ン
Historically, both kana scripts were derived from kanji. Hiragana developed from cursive handwritten forms of kanji and was used by women at the imperial court in classical Japan. Katakana, in contrast, originated from components of kanji and was initially employed as a scholarly annotation system in Buddhist texts (Iwasaki, 2013, pp. 24–25). Over time, both scripts were standardized and became integral parts of the Japanese writing system.
In contemporary Japanese, hiragana is mainly used for grammatical elements and native words, while katakana is used for
Gender in Japanese Names Today
loanwords, foreign names, and emphasis. In personal names, kana may be used instead of kanji, particularly for given names.
For example:
▪ さくら (Sakura) written in hiragana
▪ サクラ (Sakura) written in katakana
For concise introductions to the Japanese writing system, see Bond and Baldwin (2016) for a computational perspective, Backhouse (2004) for a more accessible overview, and Robertson (2021) for a deep dive.
1 Introduction
When expectant parents are asked about their baby’s name, many respond with something like, “If it’s a boy... and if it’s a girl...”. Indeed, gender is one of the most crucial factors in name selection, and most parents think about names with a particular gender in mind. Baby name books typically list names separately for boys and girls, including names that are given to both, even in countries where names are not legally required to indicate the gender of their bearers. Gender is the most commonly conveyed piece of information through a name, and many language communities mark it explicitly (Alford, 1987, p. 52; Anderson, 2007, p. 112, 114; Oelkers, 2003, p. 40, 125).
Names, much like hairstyles and clothing, often reflect societal stereotypes associated with gender and evolve alongside the changing perceptions. They reflect both short-term trends and deeper, fundamental developments in society. As society changes, so do names, adapting to new norms and values over time. While many names that were used a century ago are still given to babies today, even a brief examination of a larger list of names reveals that names and the ways gender is expressed through them have changed as dramatically during this period as the fashions in clothing or hairstyles.
An increasingly common opening when talking about the name for one’s child can be noticed in contemporary Japan. In addition to “If it’s a boy ... and if it’s a girl ...” it is not unusual to hear: “Whether it’s a boy or a girl …”. In Japan, the names given
Gender in Japanese Names Today
to babies in the twenty-first century reflect significant shifts in name preferences that emerged in the last decades of the twentieth century (Satō, 2007; Kobayashi, 2009; Makino, 2012). These changes are multifaceted and influenced by profound societal changes, including transformations in family structure (Rebick & Takenaka, 2006), the renegotiation of gender roles (Sugihara & Katsurada, 2002), the spread of individualistic culture (Ogihara, 2018), and globalization.
In postwar Japan, decisions about a child’s name typically involved the father, grandparents, or other family members, and sometimes even outsiders like the father’s workplace superior (Sakuma, 1964, pp. 65–66). However, over time, this process gradually shifted toward the more intimate sphere of the nuclear family – primarily involving both parents and sometimes older children – with the mother often taking a dominant role in the decision-making process (Makino, 2017; Barešová & Janda, 2023). As Kobayashi (2009, p. 18) explains, this led to a shift from perceiving a name primarily in terms of the individual’s future role in society (kōkyō kūkan, or public space) to their role within the close family circle (shinmitsu kūkan, or private space), thus prioritizing different criteria during the selection. The heightened attention given to children within nuclear families is also evident in the increased deliberation with which names are chosen, strongly encouraged by baby-naming guides and parenting magazines that became increasingly influential in the last two decades of the millennium, advising parents to choose an original name that reflects their child’s unique individuality (Kobayashi, 2009) and is suitable for a globalized world.
As a result, the names of today’s children are significantly more diverse, both in their phonological forms and the kanji used to represent them in writing. They are noticeably different
1 Introduction
from the names of their grandparents and older generations, which typically followed gender-specific patterns and clearly distinguished between men and women (Jugaku, 1979). One of the most common gender-specific features of women’s names for most of the twentieth century was the onymic (name-related) suffix -ko 子 . At the height of its popularity between the 1930s and 1950s, seven or even eight out of ten girls were given names such as 和子 Kazuko, 幸子 Yukiko/Sachiko, 洋子 Hiroko/Yōko, or 美 智子 Michiko (Sakuma, 1969; see Section 5.2). The vast majority of men’s and women’s names could be distinguished at first sight.
Contemporary names express gender in new ways (Unser-Schutz, 2016). The feminine suffix -ko 子 is now just one of several feminine end syllables, each represented by a variety of kanji . The currently most popular feminine end syllable, -na , appears in only one or two out of every ten girls’ names (see Chapter 7). Names without a distinctive end syllable or kanji express gender through their semantics or other features, and a growing number of names lack clear gender distinction (Satō, 2007; Barešová, 2020), being associated with neither gender or, conversely, with both.
Gender is one of the key issues defining our era, characterized in many countries by a rising focus on gender equality and greater recognition of diverse gender identities and sexualities. While the majority of Japanese names remain gender-specific, the growing popularity of names given to both boys and girls reflects a broader cultural shift away from traditional gender stereotypes and toward more inclusivity and diversity in naming. The following name selection story published on the parenting website Baby Calendar illustrates this situation:
Our son, Sakura 咲来 [‘bloom’ + ‘come’], is the youngest of three siblings. We used the character 咲 in his name just as in his sisters’
Gender in Japanese Names Today
names because it also means ‘smile’. The name expresses our wish for him to have lots of opportunities to bloom in the future, and to make everyone smile. Sakura sounds like a girl’s name, and his sisters’ names sound more like boy’s names. We want them to have flexible minds that are not bound by gender.
Mother of Sakura 咲来, boy, 2019, Baby Calendar (transl. from Japanese)
Sakura has been a popular name for girls in recent decades. In addition to being written as 桜 (or 櫻, an older version of the kanji), meaning ‘cherry blossom’, or in hiragana, a script considered feminine in names, it is now also written using a variety of kanji combinations. These combinations convey additional meanings, including aspirations for the child, as illustrated by this example of 咲来, and can make the name distinct or even unique. This is an unconventional, although not uncommon, practice as these kanji are assigned to the phonological form based on the sound they represent, but not their meanings. As will be explained later, these graphic forms do not follow any traditional gender-based name patterns, but the kanji may give a more feminine or masculine impression. The kanji combination 咲来 is more common for girls, as is the name Sakura itself, although in this particular case, the bearer of this name is a boy.
1.1 Aim and Scope of This Book
Our main goal in this book is to examine how gender is expressed in contemporary Japanese baby names and the current preferences governing its expression, while highlighting cultural specifics and their interactions with global trends. In particular, we will address questions such as: How common are gender-neutral names in