Most popular baby names of 2008

Giving a child or dog a foreign baby name is totally in right now. My Italian-Japanese friend has a beautiful baby girl with a Persian first name and a Jewish last name. My dog, Ruby, has a Hawaiian middle name. I'm sure some of you might be interested in giving your child a Japanese name. Here's a list of the most popular Japanese baby names of 2008. I decided to throw in the kanji spellings, too, because those are important to know in case your kid grows up and decides to get his name tattooed on his back, or something:

Girls:
1. Aoi 葵
2. Yui 結衣
3. Hina 陽菜
4. Rin 凜
5. Yua 結愛

Boys
1. Hiroto 大翔
2. Ren 蓮
3. Yuto 悠斗
4. Yuto 悠人
5. Yuto 優斗

Comments

[kungfupiggy]

Totoally! My Luxembourgish boss and his Italian wife named their 6 years old daughter Aiko!
Aiko is so cute. She actually ask why would I, an Asian, have an Italian name. When I ask why she has a Japanese name, she said it is because Pokemon is cool.

[Jeff]

One of my wife's friends in Japan has a daughter named "Lime" - as in the fruit.

Thing is, I'm pretty sure she had to have it approved by somebody. I don't think you can just name your kid anything in Japan; you normally have to select from a list of government-approved names. Either that or it is not her official name, I can't remember. There's some story about it, though.

I wonder about what kind of experience kids with names like that are going to have in school. Although Lime is about the cutest little girl you'll ever see, so I'm sure she'll be ok. But what if you're kind of weird *and* you have a weird name? That's gotta be hell there.

[Ujin]

So with the different kanji spellings of Yuto does it overtake Hiroto?

From what I understand Japanese is not tonal so how are the Yuto's differentiated?

[stuz]

@Ujin: where did you read that Japanese isnt tonal? Rain is ame, and candy is ame; however the intonation is different.

The differentation between the names is based on the Japanese writing of the name. Not the romaji/alphabetical/pronouncation. Like Michael, Mikael, Mikeal, etc. would be treated as distinctively different names

(all examples above are pretty bad... i know!)

[stuz]

Oh btw you can't if you just hear the name. So you ask politely what the kanji writing is. Many names in kanji can have multiple readings so even if you know the kanji you wont necessarily know the reading and you would have to ask. Japanese business cards usually have kanji, furigana/hiragana, romaji versions of the name printed on it.