flonnebonne (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
flonnebonne) wrote2007-06-25 09:23 pm
flonnebonne) wrote2007-06-25 09:23 pm
Entry tags:
Hikago Kanji BLARGH
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.
(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.
no subject
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?
no subject
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.