How to learn 人名用漢字?

Sooooo what’s the best way for actually reading people’s names? Or is it just best learning the names like pieces of vocab rather than learning all the 人名用?

The best way is ask people how to read their names ngl

Source: I am a teacher and we have katakana seating charts for a reason haha

4 Likes

If you want to get ahead in being able to read names, you could always try out the Japanese name anki deck.
I’ve been slowly going through it myself, and it gets to a point where you start to recognise the reading for names, like how you recognise the reading for in words.
Otherwise it’s not something you really need to worry about.
Like cafelatte said, you can always just ask people you meet, work with or study with how to read their names.

1 Like

Theres a bit of danger there haha (just a little)

My friend’s daughter is 愛華 which is normally read as あいか, but her name is actually まなは… Which, granted, seems to be an uncommon reading. So much so that when spelling it in messages I have to type out あいか. I recon thats an example of why most light novels usually always have the reading alongside. Every generation wanting to find unique names for their kids is probably made 10xs worse with kanji :woozy_face:

Im sure using an Anki deck could be useful for making educated guesses. Otherwise though, like @cafelatte said, it seems like you have to ask either way lol.

Edit: Didn’t mean to come off as a know it all. You seem way farther in your learning journey than me. I’m sure using spare study time to get the most common names down could be super useful! Just thought I’d share my experience bc it’s what killed my desire to even touch nanori in an SRS format :rofl:

3 Likes

kirakira names are a real problem!

1 Like