This page explains where the names come from, how the generator picks them, and exactly how the Seimei Handan (姓名判断) scores are calculated.
1. The Name Data
The generator draws from a hand-curated list of Japanese given names. Each entry records its kanji, hiragana and romaji, gender usage (female, male or unisex), style, theme, historical era tags, an English meaning, and the meaning and stroke count of every character. Filters (gender, era, purpose, theme, style, length and meaning search) narrow this list, and the generator shows a random selection of the matches.
2. The Five Pillars (五格)
Seimei Handan scores five sums of stroke counts (画数 • kakusū):
- Tenkaku (天格 • Heaven): total strokes of the family name.
- Jinkaku (人格 • Person): last character of the family name + first character of the given name.
- Chikaku (地格 • Earth): total strokes of the given name.
- Soukaku (総格 • Total): Tenkaku + Chikaku, the strokes of the whole name.
- Gaikaku (外格 • Outer): Soukaku − Jinkaku (minimum 1).
Each sum is reduced to the traditional 1–81 cycle and looked up in a fortune table: 大吉 (dai-kichi, great fortune), 吉 (kichi, good fortune) and 中吉 (chū-kichi, moderate fortune). Numbers that traditional tables treat as unlucky are shown as "growth potential" rather than as a bad omen.
3. Stroke Counting
Stroke counts use the modern Japanese character forms (新字体 • shinjitai) taught in schools. Some Seimei Handan schools instead count traditional forms (旧字体) or give radicals their original stroke values (for example, counting 氵 as 4 strokes because it comes from 水). Those schools can produce different totals, so results from different sites may not match.
4. How Names Were Selected
The list is curated rather than scraped. Names were included when they are genuinely used in Japan — modern given names, classical and historical names, names of well-documented historical figures, and traditional pet names — and each one is tagged with the eras and purposes it suits, so a Sengoku-period warlord is never presented as a current baby name. Where a name is rare, mythological or mainly used in fiction, the cultural note says so.
5. English Names in Japanese
English names are first written in katakana, the standard script for foreign names in Japan (this is how a name appears on a Japanese residence card). Katakana follows pronunciation rather than spelling, so silent letters disappear, consonant clusters gain vowels, and L and R share one row of sounds. We also suggest ateji (当て字): kanji chosen for their sound and positive meaning. Ateji are a creative tradition, and they are not how foreign names are officially written.
6. Known Limits
- Stroke counts assume modern forms. Schools of Seimei Handan that use traditional forms or count radicals by their parent character will produce different totals.
- Ateji are suggestions, not standards. Several readings are loose approximations of the katakana; they are offered as artistic options, and a Japanese speaker may read them differently.
- The curated list is a selection, not a census. It covers a hundred given names in depth rather than thousands in outline, so a name's absence does not mean it is not used in Japan.
- Popularity data is annual. Rankings are updated when the Japanese surveys publish, usually at the end of the calendar year.
Found something wrong? Email contact@japanesenames.org and we will check it against the sources and correct it.