Helpful Sites for Japanese Name Ideas

[mercurialNitrogen]

I lurked quite a bit on the previous incarnations of utaforum and saw quite a lot of posts asking for name ideas, and Japanese names are really popular (obviously eUe). My personal experience trying to think of good Japanese names for UTAUs involved thinking of them for hours just to settle on a decent one; I'm really picky and indecisive about them and, after reading UTAUwiki's article on UTAUloid naming, I always want to make sure the name isn't potentially offensive/weird sounding to native Japanese.

Here's some links to websites and reasons why I think they help, if you want to make a really creative name that breaks away from the '-ne' names Oops I forgot to say this also applies to first names and last names.:

http://utau.wikia.com/wiki/UTAU_wiki:UTAUloid_Naming_And_Profiling

Ah, UTAUwiki. If you're daunted by the walls of text, I suggest you skim read over the section about names unless it's in important bold. It also tells you some interesting stuff some people wouldn't know about Japanese naming conventions!

http://www.kanjizone.com/
Now I've only discovered this website very recently (yesterday ._.), but it helped me a lot and saved me from opening a zillion tabs on different websites and Google translate to find suitable kanji. You can also put in a foreign name (for example, "Michelle") then the site lists kanji for the name broken up into syllables (Mi-shi-e-ru) that sound the same but have different meanings. (Like this: http://www.kanjizone.com/kanjiname.aspx?name=Michelle)

http://www.issendai.com/rpgs/japanese-girls-names-1.shtml
This, in my opinion, is a really good list of Japanese names with their meanings beside them. If you don't want to sneak a witty pun your UTAUloid's name, just use this. At the bottom of the page is a link to a list of boys' names too.

http://www.jref.com/japan/society/japanese_family_names.shtml
If you're up for exercising your creative skills over Japanese surnames, this website is for you! It's not just a list of common Japanese surnames, it includes prefixes and suffixes of surnames to play around with for the UTAUloids who don't want to be your average "Daisuke Yamamoto".

http://www.behindthename.com/names/usage/japanese
Like issendai.com, this website is a list of names but you may find the explained kanji useful.

 

[stormylullaby]

I love you right now. This topic needed to be made a long time ago >.<

Would you mind if I added to this? The sites you listed are excellent choices!

These sites aren't specifically name-based, however can definitely be useful in deciding names.

Japanese Transliteration
This site will transliterate any non-Japanese name/word you put into it, & not only gives you the romaji, but the hiragana & katakana as well. So if you wanted to name your UTAU a non-Japanese name, this site can make sure that you're using the right romaji/hiragana/katakana.

Denshi Jisho
This site's a non-native Japanese speaker's best friend. It's a very comprehensive and accurate Japanese dictionary. Input an English word, and up comes all the sources that match with that word. Kanji is given, as well as kana, but to get the romaji, you'd have to check off the "Kana as Romaji" box when you search.

 

[mercurialNitrogen]

Yeah, it was kinda strange seeing threads on everything but name advice e_e

Thanks a lot for the extra links, .w. I'm quite baffled by Denshi Jisho but it's definitely teaching me one or two things. I think more users with no knowledge of Japanese will use the first site, since it gives romaji, katakana and hiragana in one go (although maybe they have to search up the different writing systems). Maybe tomorrow I'll edit my original post to demonstrate how I came up with a name using those sites.