WaKan Project Website

[Tom Hodgers]

Hi everybody,

As of 14/09/2004 Japanese children may now be named with a further 488 Kanji for given names or Jinmei Kanji.

Following is an abstract from an article that appeared yesterday in "The Kanji Clinic"

Since 1990, the Justice Ministry has limited the kanji allowed for use in Japanese personal names to those among the 1,945 general-use (joyo) kanji and 285 name (jinmei) kanji. Beginning last month, however, a wide range of new naming options became available: Responding to public pressure, the ministry has increased the number of jinmei kanji by 488, bringing the total number to 773.

88 JIS kanji were axed from the initial list--including “ant,” “haemorrhoid,” “mother-in-law,” and “debauchery.”

Some of the new jinmei kanji possess the potential to emerge as serious players in the “Name That Baby” game. Watch for “Strawberry” to press its way into the Top 10 list of girls’ names within a year or so. Japanese parents are also now free to name their daughters “Apple,” just as American movie actress Gwenyth Paltrow recently did.

The current boom in flower-kanji monikers for girls-- as evidenced by “Hollyhock” (Aoi) and “Bud” (Moe) in the 2003 Top 10 girls’ names list--is likely to continue: Kikyou (bellflower) and Nadeshiko (pink--the flower) are comprised of new jinmei kanji, and the Japanese media has them pegged to become hot new names.

See the full article at:

http://www.kanjiclinic.com/kc61final.htm


If you would like a complete list of the new Jinmei Kanji it may be downloaded (in Japanese) in pdf format from:

http://www.moj.go.jp/SHINGI/040908-6-1.pdf


BETTER STILL, WAIT FOR NEXT WEEK WHEN I WILL POST A VOCABULARY FILE OF THESE NEW "KANJI FOR PROPER NAMES" (and of those that didn't quite make it).


Cheers,

Tom

[wakan]

Thanks Tom,

when you post the vocabulary file, I'll gladly put it to the Wakan website.

Do you think that Jim Breen and Unicode are going to update their databases (KANJIDIC, UNIHAN) to reflect this change soon?

Filip

[Tom Hodgers]

Hi Filip,

The New Jinmei Kanji list, after some great sleuthing by Nigel and terrific editing by Tony is now ready and I believe it has been posted (along with the Old Jinmei Kanji list) in a zip file to the download page.

It took us a little bit longer than planned as 5 of the kanji do not appear in KanjiDic and we were trying to find their readings.

Some of the information was gleaned by Nigel, some kindly presented to us by Mary Sisk Noguchi, of the Kanji Clinic, and some by Jim Breen earlier this week.

The 5 kanji not in KANJIDIC are not in the JIS X 0208 standard; they are actually in JIS X 0212/0213. You can see them in WWWJDIC by looking them up via their Unicode codepoints.

Jim says he will have the KANJIDIC/KANJD212 files updated soon.


Cheers,

Tom

[wakan]

Wonderful news! Thank you! I'm trying it out right now.
Please if you happen to notice that Jim has updated KANJIDIC, let me know, I'll rebuild .CHR.

Filip