Kousuke Keisuke japanese names

Hi,

I'm somewhat off topic but I wonder about these two japanese names.
This may sound stupid but I really like the ring to them.

I know that the 'suke' translates to 'help'. Somewhere I read that the Kei(Œ) = square jewel. Does anybody know home this name came into plce and if there are diffrent spellings(kanji) of it?

... after wiki-ing it, I see there are difrent versions of Kousuke as well...

Suke can be written as •ã (from Hori Kousuke - politican) or —C (from Keisuke Honda - footballplayer) and both gets translated to help.

I notieced there are diffrent ways of writing a name, so I wonder. Is their a rule japanese parents are to follow when naming a child or can they just mix some kanji together and say: okay it's pronunced as 'name'?

There are a few thousand kanjis that are recognized for use in names, with specific sounds associated with each of them, that parents can make their children's names with.

Parents consider both the sounds of the name and the written kanji (which carry meanings, and also some parents seem to care a lot about the number of strokes in kanji that make up the name, as there seem to be some "good luck" number of strokes).

What happens is that when you say "Keisuki" (you like the sound of it, you say, so apparently you heard it, or seen only the romanized version of it, but not seen the kanji for someone's name), it can be written in different combinations of kanji (combination of two kanji, most likely, in the case of this name), but if you ask that footballplayer, for example, how his name is written, he will just give you that "one combination of kanji" that he's been given by his parents.

Whoops, I meant to write "Keisuke," not "Keisuki."

Thanks AK,

Can you tell me more about the 'good luck' number strokes? is there an opposited to that aswell, like 15 strokes are bad luck?

thanks again

I'm not fully familiar with it - apparently my parents didn't care of that kind of thinking lol - it seems to have something to do with the total number of strokes, *including* both the given name and the family name anyway.

My nephew's name also has the ending "suke", but in his case the kanji is ‰î, which is one of the more common ones. A famous singer, Kuwata Keisuke, has the kanji Œj—S for his name.

If you like names ending in "suke", there are quite a few- ones I have come across are Daisuke, Shinnosuke, Shunnosuke, Kensuke, Ryunosuke and even Toranosuke (the Tora means tiger). The popularity of "suke" names seems to go in waves and in the last year or so they seem to be quite popular- I know of at least two baby boys who have been given "suke" names this year.

As AK says, some parents are interested in the stroke number of the kanji in the name and even consult experts to help them find a "lucky" name, whereas other people don't give it a thought, and most people couldn't tell you whether a certain name would be "lucky" or not- they are more interested in the sound and the meaning.