Japanese Name Generator

Japanese names are written surname first (Sato Haruto) but usually flipped to given-name-first in English, which is the order used below. Roughly 100,000 surnames are in use, far more than in China or Korea, and the most common ones (Sato, Suzuki, Takahashi, Tanaka, Watanabe, Ito, Yamamoto, Nakamura, Kobayashi, Kato) are overwhelmingly built from landscape kanji: ta (rice field), yama (mountain), kawa (river), mura (village), hashi (bridge), moto (origin), naka (middle), and ue or shita (above, below). Tanaka is 'middle of the rice field', Yamamoto 'foot of the mountain', Kobayashi 'small forest'.

Given names signal generation and gender. Boys born before 1970 often carry names ending in -o (Hideo, Kazuo), -shi (Hiroshi, Takeshi), or birth-order names like Ichiro and Jiro; today's most popular boys' names are short and soft: Haruto, Minato, Sota, Riku, Ren. Girls' names of the Showa era almost always end in -ko (Keiko, Michiko, Yoko), while current favourites such as Himari, Yui, Mei, Tsumugi, and Hina skip it entirely. Many modern names are unisex in sound (Sora, Hinata, Aoi, Itsuki), and the same romaji can be written with different kanji, each with its own meaning.

The list below mixes eras and genders and uses standard Hepburn romanization without macrons, the spelling you will see on passports, in manga translations, and in anime credits.