R&J: Hey guys! R: So, being with each other, we are constantly
saying things off-handedly that end up really surprising the other person about our culture.
And one of the things that really surprised me was when we somehow got on the topic of
how anime characters are named. Most of us already know a lot of the really famous characters,
like Naruto: his name is actually a type of Japanese food. You put it in ramen. Gohan
from Dragonball Z; that means rice. Goku is actually Son Goku, he’s named after a monkey
king from a classical Chinese novel. But if you’re like me, you probably didn’t know
just how clever and carefully designed a lot of these names really are.
J: Many manga or anime character’s names are not real Japanese names at all. Some of
them are just made up words/names, and some of them are just authors’ favorite names.
And in some manga, like Death Note for example, the author purposely avoids using real names,
especially for criminals, because he doesn’t want to inconvenience anyone who might have
those same names in real life. R: Even more than that, because Japanese is
such a complex language when you get into kanji, a lot of anime characters names are
actually plays on words or puns, or the kanji can have meanings that describe the characters
themselves. J: Yeah, it’s so obvious to us because we
grew up with this language. So we can tell like, “This is obviously not a real Japanese
name,” or “This one sounds like an anime name,” or “This one actually sounds like
a sentence.” For example, using the Japanese particle “no” in a name.
R: So for those of you who don’t know any Japanese, this particle “no” can be added
on to the word before it to indicate possession. So essentially in this case, it becomes an
“ ’s” in English. So in Sailor Moon, her name is Usagi. And most of us already
know that that means rabbit. And then her family name is Tsukino. And most of us can
look at the word Tsukino and see that the word “moon” or “tsuki” is a part of
that name. But when you read her name in the Japanese way, which is family name first,
you get Tsukino Usagi, which actually sounds like Tsuki no usagi. Which would be “The
moon’s rabbit,” or more clearly translated into English, “Rabbit of the moon.” In
English we have a saying that there’s a “man in the moon.” Because that’s what
we see when we look at the moon. But in Japan, they don’t see a “man in the moon,”
they see a rabbit! J: Or crabs.
R: Or… or crabs? J: Yeah, crabs.
R: So Sailor Moon’s name is actually really clever because it’s using a real Japanese
family name to play on words and invoke the image of Japanese folklore.
And there’s another really good example of this as well, and that would be Sakura
Haruno from Naruto. In Japanese, her name is Haruno Sakura. And a lot of us probably
know what these Japanese words are. “Haru” is spring, and “sakura” means cherry blossoms.
So her name is actually literally a Japanese sentence when you read it like this. It becomes
“Spring’s cherry blossoms,” or more clearly translated, “Cherry blossoms in
the spring.” J: It’s very obvious to me so it was very
fun to see Rachel getting surprised by all these names.
R: Well, it’s really difficult for us to tell in English, especially when the character
names are transliterated into the English alphabet.
J: Well, yeah. So for example, the criminals from Death Note. So, “Kiichiro Osoreda.”
So when you look at his name, it’s spelled like this. “Ki-ichi-ro.” And this kanji,
“ki”—this means “strange” or “rare.” And it’s literally rare and strange to have
this kanji. It’s normally this kanji for “ki” (Ki-ichi-ro) and this means “joy”
or “happy.” So it’s almost impossible for anyone in Japan to have the same name
as them. R: It might sound exactly the same when you
say it out loud, but of course kanji is just as important in a name as the way it sounds.
J: Yeah, Kiichiro… R: So, here’re some other minor characters
from Death Note. R: Mainichi Asaji, which literally means “Every
day, next morning.” R: Nusumi Yonegorou. Nusumi literally translated
is “sneak a look.” It could be something like a peeping tom. And this is a character
who was killed because he raped a woman. R: And this is a really minor character, but
he’s probably one of my favorite characters now that I know what his name is. His name
is Kaneboshi Ginzou. And you’ll actually learn these two kanji early on when you’re
studying Japanese. The first one in this case means “kane” or “money,” and then
“boshi” or “hoshii” means “I want.” So his name is literally “I want money.”
And then his first name, Ginzou, means “I create silver.” And this is a character
who was killed because he was a loan shark who committed violent acts to retrieve the
money that he loaned out to people. R: What about Bleach?
J: Ichigo? Ahh… I don’t know what kind of meanings the author gave to his name, but
Ichigo… Ichi means “first” and go means “protect,” so like I don’t know, his
first priority is to protect something, or he’s the number one protector of the Shinigami
realm, or something. I don’t know. R: Oh. I thought because his name was Ichigo,
it meant “strawberry.” J: You thought what?? Strawberry?
R: I am absolutely positive there is a ton of fanart out there with Ichigo with strawberries,
or Ichigo as a strawberry, because I’m betting pretty much everyone else makes the same mistake.
J: Well, there’s actually a manga called Ichigo 100% from Shounen Jump a little while
ago. R: So this is a love harem comedy manga, where
the main character’s name is Manaka, and that literally means “the center.” And
the girls that he is in a love square? with—the first kanji of their family names are the
cardinal directions on a compass. J: KITAooji from the north, and TOUjou from
the east, and MINAMIto from the south, and NISHIno from the west.
R: What other Jump manga have you read? J: Ahh, I don’t really read Jump, but watched
Yu-Gi-Oh! when I was a kid. R: Me too.
J: You did? R: Yeah.
J: So, this is the kanji, how you write Yu-Gi-Oh! And “yugi” means “a game” or “play/to
play.” And “ou” is a king. So, the king of the game.
R: I didn’t even know Yu-Gi-Oh! had kanji to it. I just thought it was like a weird…
kinda dumb name. I mean, in the English version it’s written with these hyphens. It doesn’t
even look like a Japanese name at all. J: Yeah.
R: I watched the first season of Attack on Titan, and Mikasa, the really cool, super
strong woman? Mikasa is actually the name of a Japanese battleship that was the flagship
for Admiral Togo in the Battle of Tsushima. J: Yeah, Mikasa.
R: And if you’re interested in Japanese history, I actually made a video about it.
J: Yeah. Oh, speaking of battleships, actually many characters from Evangelion are named
after Japanese ships. And the main character’s and his father’s family name is Ikari, which
means “anchor.” R: So they’re like anchoring everyone together.
J: Yeah, kind of. R: That’s really cool!
R: So, you have Ayanami Rei, and Ayanami is the name of a destroyer.
Soryu Asuka Langley—she’s actually named after THREE separate ships. Soryu is the name
of an aircraft carrier, Asuka is the name of a torpedo gunboat, and Langley is the USS
Langley. Akagi Ritsuko is- Akagi is the name of an
aircraft carrier. And Katsuragi Misato, Katsuragi is also the
name of an aircraft carrier. J: Yeah and there’s also Fuyutsuki and other
you know, just minor characters. R: Right. And of course there are a ton of
anime and manga characters who have names that aren’t even anywhere close to real
names in real life. Although oftentimes their names still do have meanings, or they’re
puns or something like that. So for example you have like One Piece, so Luffy, Usopp,
and Zoro… Then like, for Dragonball Z you have like Bulma, Krillin…
J: Vegeta. R: Vegeta.
J: But recently some parents named their children after manga or anime characters.
R: Right, and those are called “kirakira” names and we’re actually going to make a
video about that in the future. R: So, I hope you guys found this interesting
and you learned some new stuff like I did. We actually have a couple anime that we really
like where a lot of characters have really interesting names so we’re going to make
full videos just for those anime. And if you guys have your favorite characters and you
want to know what the meanings of their names are, then please ask us down in the comments!
And I apologize in advance if they’re not interesting. But if there’re enough of them
then we’ll make a full video on those, too, to answer all of your questions.
J: Thanks for watching! R: Byeee!