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How to come up with japanese names? 2014/10/5 11:56
Hello, I am a game creator and this is my first japanese based game I am making, one day I would like to turn it into a manga. I have the name for the main character but I need a name for the vilian but most importantly I need a name for the game itself. I look at other manga writers to find out how they came up with there names, but I still can think of a name and the thing is i don't know meanings of names, I tried translating names. I just need to know how can I come up with a japanese name for my new game I am creating.
by Kisukeyo  

Re: How to come up with japanese names? 2014/11/10 06:40
It all depends on what you want... Is this going to be a realistic or slice-of-life story with more realistic/common names, or a fantasy/scifi type of story where characters can have made-up names?

In a story that takes place in modern Japan, it would be fine to use baby name sites to find common Japanese names.
You can choose names based on the meaning if it suits the character, or you can just choose on your own preference/randomly, since realistically, a name doesn't dictate our personality.

Some manga artists choose based on the meaning fitting the characters(for example, someone who likes birds could have Toriyama, literally "Bird Mountain", as their surname) if it's not a too realistic story, such as in supernatural shounen series aimed at younger teens/kids.

If it's a fantasy or sci-fi setting, you can pretty much make up names out of nowhere. For example in the Phantasy Star series, there are names that aren't really Japanese, but suit the outerspace setting, like Quna, or even common western names like Luther.



The titles of Japanese anime/manga/games/novels seems mostly random in my opinion...

I think most titles are descriptive of what the subject of the story is, for example, "Kuroshitsuji" is literally, "Black Butler". It describes the character of the manga which is literally a butler dressed in all black.

There are a lot of titles that are pretty/stylish English words(such as Pandora Hearts). Sometimes other languages like French or Latin are used. Mainly this is because foreign words are seen as stylish or exotic.
Some make more sense than others, such as "Kingdom Hearts", in which the title is an actual thing in the game.

I have noticed some titles are even just long phrases or sentences relating to the story, such as:
"Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai"(My little sister can't be this cute),
or
"Watashi ga Motenai no wa dou Kangaetemo Omaera ga Warui!"(No Matter How I Look at It, Itfs You Guys' Fault Ifm Not Popular!).



It's really pretty much the same rules that apply to western stories.
by Kouki Elska rate this post as useful

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