Hikago Kanji BLARGH

[flonnebonne]

I should have been studying Japanese tonight, but who am I kidding, I only study Japanese when I'm incredibly bored. So instead, I stared at this list of Hikaru no Go character names, kanji included. And I noticed that Hikaru, Sai, and Akari's family names contain the character 藤, which apparently means "wisteria," and apparently wisteria is a lovely hanging purple flower, which I never knew until I came to Japan because I am an ignorant lout.

(I've also learned that there's such a thing as a "rape blossom," which I think is actually just a horrible way of saying "canola flower." The Japanese word is much nicer: "nanohana.")

Anyway, back to Hikago...the character 藤 is the "dou" in Shindou and the "fuji" in Fujiwara and Fujisaki. Cool, huh? Not so cool is the fact that 藤 also appears in a mostly unimportant Kaioh kid's name (Itou, if you care to know. He doesn't even have a given name). So yeah, probably not such an uncommon kanji.

Another interesting thing: Hikaru and Akira are written in katakana (whut?), which makes me wonder what kind of crack their parents were smoking when they named their kids back in the crazy 'eighties. But maybe it's common in manga? Or maybe I'm just sheltered because I live in the countryside and in Tokyo there are actually zillions of young plebes with katakana-ized names who are all striving for the Hand of God together in perfect synchrony (not like that) without me knowing about it. Or maybe Hikaru is named after Utada Hikaru, the poor slob, so his name is written in katakana like hers is.

(Btw, that wasn't a slur against Utada Hikaru, I actually like her.)

One more thing: Kaneko, the volleyball girl from the Haze go club...Kaneko is apparently her family name. Her full name is Kaneko Masako. What a girly family name...usually the "ko" ending is only on girls' given names. Her kanji looks kind of silly too: 金子正子. It means something like "gold child righteous child."

日本語分かねえええええ。 ("I dunno Japanese") <--------------I dunno if I even wrote that correctly.

[Edit] The character 藤 seems to be really, really common in names, now that I'm paying attention. It's often used in the name Satou (佐藤), for example, which is the most common family name in Japan.

Comments

[svz-insanity.livejournal.com]

Or maybe Hikaru is named after Utada Hikaru, the poor slob, so his name is written in katakana like hers is. HAHAHA. I mentioned that in one of my Hikago almost-fics.

Oooh, that bit about Kaneko's interesting. Hmm, I might squirrel that away and use it in a fic. :D

[flonnebonne]

I thought someone had made a connection between Utada Hikaru and Shindo in a fic before, I just couldn't remember where or who. :)

Um, please don't take everything I said as god's holy truth and use it in a fic, because me = ignorant lout.

[troisroyaumes]

I remember there was once some speculation somewhere about the deep symbolic meaning in how Hikaru and Akira had katakana names, while Akari's was in hiragana. ^_^ Still not sure what it's supposed to mean though.

I wonder if Kaneko likes her own name. I bet there's a backstory in that.

[flonnebonne]

I think the the explanation that harumi found in a doujinshi is probably somewhere along the right lines.

For all I know Kaneko's name is perfectly normal and I'm making a molehill out of an anthill or something. Don't believe everything I say! I have no idea what I'm talking about most of the time.

[love]

*petpets* Perhaps Obata-sensei didn't want to decide on a kanji. I mean, Hikaru and Akira are names that read as "shine" or "light" ... but if you decided on a kanji you would have bought into meanings associated with the kanjis as well as with the names.

As for Utada Hikaru, it is possible that people use the katakana to hide their real names. Utada isn't a very common surname. Perhaps using her name in katakana alaso helps make her accessible to those who are lazy about kanji.

I have a student whose last name is Kaneko. ^_^ (I also have a student called Kunimitsu, and another with the family name of Tezuka. I have NOT met a Tezuka Kunimitsu, but a friend over at AEON has. He even looked like Tezzie, she said. XD <3 Anyway.) I don't think the Japanese notice the last names. Did you know Kaede is a BOY's name? I always thought it was female ... may be a unisex thing.

I am rambling, aren't I? XD Sorry.

[flonnebonne]

harumi said she saw a doujinshi that said the same thing. Makes sense to me. :)

I think Utada is usually written in kanji and it's only Hikaru that's katakana-ized? I heard somewhere that it's because she was born in the US. But it would certainly make her more accessible for kanji-lazy people.

Nah, I haven't met anyone with a really interesting family name. But I do have a couple of kids named Ryouma.

I know Kaede can be a boy's name because there's a male character in Slam Dunk named Kaede. Rukawa Kaede. I think it's slightly girly, since the character has a pretty face. But don't quote me on that.

I have a student named Hikaru who I thought was a boy for the longest time...until I saw her in a skirt one day (she always wore her gym clothes before that). Took me a few minutes to process that she wasn't cross-dressing or anything.

[kitsune-jade.livejournal.com]

正子 <-I looked that up also out of curiosity and it came up as midnight too. Unless of course I am reading it the wrong way because my Japanese sucks big time. XD XD

I was actually surprised that Akira's name was in katakana not kanji seeing Touya Kouyo seems to be quite the tradionalist.

[flonnebonne]

Oh yeah! The dictionary is giving me midnight too. That's what I get for not actually looking stuff up. *dummy!*

The explanation that harumi found in a doujinshi seems to fit the bill. It's still a bit weird, what with Touya Kouyo dragging himself around in hakama all the time, but maybe his wife got to choose Akira's name?

[kitsune-jade.livejournal.com]

Maybe. It might have been an agreement on both sides. A little of the old and new, since I could actually see Akiko convincing her husband that not having a single meaning for their son's name would be nice and all.

Kaneko's name = Golden Child of Midnight sounds better to me. XD

[kindofspark.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this interesting post!

Searching in the net, I learnt also that in Japan wisteria is a symbol for tender friendship; this is so very appropriate for Hikaru, Sai and Akari, isn't it?

[flonnebonne]

Very appropriate! I like the fact that Akari gets to play a part in that...

[harumi.livejournal.com]

I once read a doujinshi that explains why Akira didn't have a kanji to his name. It was highly plausible, so I'll give you the gist of it.

Kanji for Akira has as many as ten different kanji, all pronounced the same. Why give Akira one meaning to his name when he could possibly have all ten?

Probably the same thing for Hikaru at any rate.

[flonnebonne]

I like that explanation! I liked it so much that I foisted it onto a lot of the people who commented on this post.

Never thought that katakana could possibly be more meaningful than kanji.

...

[cryforthedream.livejournal.com]

Looks like you wound up studying Japanese in the end anyway. =D

Re: ...

[flonnebonne]

Curses! Foiled again! :p

There's studying, and then there's studying.

[search-soleil.livejournal.com]

Hi, uh, I came by to check to make sure that you'd made your changes to Walking With Ghosts in the original post (http://flonnebonne.livejournal.com/14343.html), so that I know I'm reading the right thing for iHikago (if it is right, it's just about finished :D), but then I saw this and had a serious "HEY, I KNOW THAT ONE, PICK ME" moment. (I think I have temporarily regressed back to my ten year-old self. >_>)

harumi is partially right, in that the names Akira and Hikaru can have multiple kanji combinations that have different meanings. The main reason that some characters in manga end up with names in katakana though, is because manga like Hikaru No Go (at least in Japan) are primarily aimed towards the Shounen Jump-reading audience and some of the kids in that crowd can be very young. Complicated kanji leads to little kids getting the wrong meaning and possibly the wrong pronunciation. The last thing manga-ka want is to have a significant portion of their audience calling the main characters by the wrong names. Katakana makes things very simple for them.

Of course, I can't verify this 100%, but I've read that CLAMP had this issue with Kodansha when they started Card Captor Sakura, which was their first (and arguably their only) kid-targeted work.

So after barging in on a month old post for that totally off-topic discourse, can I be sure that the version I linked above is the version you would prefer to be read for iHikago?

[flonnebonne]

Hi hi! I made the changes to Walking With Ghosts a while back, so you do have the right version. Can't wait to hear your reading of it! :)

Hm, it still kind of surprises me that they would put Akira and Hikaru's names in katakana, since almost all manga contain furigana (the little hiragana characters written above kanji that spell out how to read them). But I guess people who can read kanji tend to skip the furigana, which can lead to mistakes.