Name to kanji converter

[Ben Bullock]

I've made a name to kanji converter which I thought people here might enjoy:

http://www.sljfaq.org/cgi/name-kanji.cgi

This is a beta testing version. Type your name in the box to get a "Kanji Name".

For example, Ben Bullock gets you

Your kanji name is

辨・嘸陸

If you try again you get a new kanji name.

[Shannon Jacobs]

Hmmm... No reaction in over two weeks? And I thought usenet was as immortal as COBOL, eh? Pretty dead around here.

Anyway, it reminds me of the story of creating my kanji name over 20 years ago... I kind of went about it sideways, based on the pronunciation, but...

One syllable of my name was easy to work with, with a number of kanji to select from, but the other syllable turned out to be illegal, at least in 常用漢字 terms... So I cheated and switched the vowel value because the unstressed syllable in English can use different vowels. With the new vowel, I again had a group of 'legal' candidates, and I picked the final pair by considering ease of writing and memorable meaning, but it turned out that it sounded like the name of a Chinese monk...

The proximate motive was actually that my professor said I should get a hanko if I was moving out of Tokyo, so I paid about 3,000 yen for the custom chop--but then I wound up moving back to Tokyo in less than a year. (After which I wound up in Kawasaki for a long time...)

The topic also reminds me of http://seoi.net/goro/ which is a website that makes any number (like your phone number) into a list of mnemonic phrases in Japanese. Runs quite slowly now, so I should look for a newer and faster one?

[Ben Bullock]

On Sunday, 11 October 2015 13:39:37 UTC+9, Shannon Jacobs wrote:

> Anyway, it reminds me of the story of creating my kanji name over 20
> years ago... I kind of went about it sideways, based on the
> pronunciation, but...

> One syllable of my name was easy to work with, with a number of
> kanji to select from, but the other syllable turned out to be
> illegal, at least in 常用漢字 terms... So I cheated and switched the
> vowel value because the unstressed syllable in English can use
> different vowels. With the new vowel, I again had a group of 'legal'
> candidates, and I picked the final pair by considering ease of
> writing and memorable meaning, but it turned out that it sounded
> like the name of a Chinese monk...

My site gave the following for "Shannon Jacobs":

乎シャ音ノン・詠ジェー倨コ毋ブ都ズ

My site uses a system for converting the name into kana. I
noticed that some names came out wrongly, so I added a facility to
convert kana into ateji as well. This is somebody's input of kana a
few hours ago:

http://www.sljfaq.org/cgi/name-kanji_ja.cgi?e=%E3%82%A2%E3%83%AB%E3%83%86%E3%83%9F%E3%82%B9

Here are some examples of its output:

存弖矚数
翹塁逹利簀
齏榴稻縻鋤

Oddly enough a lot of people were also entering kanji names, like
Chinese names, so I added an error message for that case:

http://www.sljfaq.org/cgi/name-kanji_ja.cgi?e=%E7%8E%8B%E6%98%8E

There are also a lot of people entering romanized Chinese names, but
unfortunately the application is biased mostly towards English names.

> The topic also reminds me of http://seoi.net/goro/ which is a
> website that makes any number (like your phone number) into a list
> of mnemonic phrases in Japanese. Runs quite slowly now, so I should
> look for a newer and faster one?

I tried that, but it didn't seem extremely slow to me.

[Crystal]

Ben Bullock <benkasmi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, 11 October 2015 13:39:37 UTC+9, Shannon Jacobs wrote:
>
>> Anyway, it reminds me of the story of creating my kanji name over 20
>> years ago... I kind of went about it sideways, based on the
>> pronunciation, but...
>
>> One syllable of my name was easy to work with, with a number of
>> kanji to select from, but the other syllable turned out to be
>> illegal, at least in 常用漢字 terms... So I cheated and switched the
>> vowel value because the unstressed syllable in English can use
>> different vowels. With the new vowel, I again had a group of 'legal'
>> candidates, and I picked the final pair by considering ease of
>> writing and memorable meaning, but it turned out that it sounded
>> like the name of a Chinese monk...
>
> My site gave the following for "Shannon Jacobs":
>
> 乎シャ音ノン・詠ジェー倨コ毋ブ都ズ

That's interesting! Given that the process which led to the
insertion of /n/ in Japanese is no longer productive in the
modern language, I only expect the ノン reading in pre-formed
words like 観音. Seeing it used this way is counterintuitive
to me.

Of course, I'm just a learner. I wonder whether other folks
would agree that it's counterintuitive. What do you think?

If anyone would like more information about the /n/-insertion
process, please see the Wikipedia page for 連声（れんじょう）:

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%80%A3%E5%A3%B0

Or see _A History of the Japanese Language_ (Frellesvig 2010),
starting on page 200, for an English language description.

--
-Crystal

[Ben Bullock]

On Monday, 12 October 2015 23:00:07 UTC+9, Crystal wrote:

> Ben Bullock <benkasmi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > My site gave the following for "Shannon Jacobs":
> >
> > 乎シャ音ノン・詠ジェー倨コ毋ブ都ズ
>
> That's interesting! Given that the process which led to the
> insertion of /n/ in Japanese is no longer productive in the
> modern language, I only expect the ノン reading in pre-formed
> words like 観音. Seeing it used this way is counterintuitive
> to me.

I think you make a very interesting point, but if I may narrowly
restrict my response to this "ateji" producing web program, the kanji
is picked randomly by the computer from a list of matches which have
the pronunciation "non". There are only three of these in kanjidic, so
it would be a shame to remove one of them. Also note that if it's
counterintuitive or otherwise unacceptable then one can just get
another "ateji" name just by clicking again, with a different random
kanji. There are some kana combinations which have no
corresponding kanji, so in those cases the ateji program has to
"reach" even harder.

[Shannon Jacobs]

On Tuesday, October 13, 2015 at 11:00:04 AM UTC+9, Ben Bullock wrote:
> On Monday, 12 October 2015 23:00:07 UTC+9, Crystal wrote:

Hmmm... So the google favors bottom posting, eh? No sense fighting city hall? Or I'm just tired now.

When I was considering the kanji name for my hanko, I was aware of the "non" as in Kannon (観音), but I think it is regarded as an ateji, not a joyo reading, so I didn't want to go that way. I wanted a two-kanji chop, but my family name was basically too much of a mess in Japanese to mess with--and I think the conversion above supports that view.

(On the minor topic of the mnemonic number website, maybe my memory is just fuzzy about the speed. Might be same as it ever was and I'm just used to faster websites now.)

The general topic does remind me of my ongoing beef against Romaji... Don't see any excuse for using it most books these days, and especially not for citations or cross-references. Even if you are completely aware of the Japanese equivalent, the back-translation is a nuisance and may still be ambiguous, and if don't know Japanese, then the Romaji is just gibberish that doesn't tell you anything about whatever English words it is supposed to be related to.

I really wish they would switch to real Japanese in almost all such cases... We have the font technologies to print (or display) things in the right way now, and yet we still see English books with extra Japanese references in Romaji... (Of course, with electronic books we have the theoretical capability to display such things according to each reader's preferences, though I haven't seen such yet.)

[Tzortzakakis Dimitris]

Your kanji name is

臑臨酉圖・闍奄存戯漸築
which doesn't make any sense to me:-)
normally my name is デミチリ・ジョジ　because I don't think any japanese
people would bother pronouncing Tzortzakakis (even cretan people have
trouble with it and call me Tzortzakis, Tzorbatzakis etc.)
Strangely enough my name in hebrew is דימיטריס ditto for my
surname and besides that in hebrew you address people by their first
name:-)

[muchan]

On Mon, 12 Oct 2015 23:05:07 -0700 (PDT)
Shannon Jacobs <shannon...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The general topic does remind me of my ongoing beef against Romaji...
> Don't see any excuse for using it most books these days, and
> especially not for citations or cross-references. Even if you are
> completely aware of the Japanese equivalent, the back-translation is
> a nuisance and may still be ambiguous, and if don't know Japanese,
> then the Romaji is just gibberish that doesn't tell you anything
> about whatever English words it is supposed to be related to.

Now, so many Syrian people are coming to Europe, I thought, maybe it's
time for me to learn Arabic language. But I thought about shortcut,
I'd learn it phonetically first, and searched the net a tutorial in
romaji... or in latin alphabet... I failed to find one.
Actually, I don't think I'll be fluent, I don't think I'll read an
entire book in Arabic... (Only in some languages I've learned so far
I read an entire book.) I just wanted overview and some practical
phrases plus some basic vocabulary... a short introduction without
puting so much effort in reading.

(When I lived in Tokyo, I had work to visit ambassies of many countries,
including Oman, Egipt, etc., and once I could read Arabic characters
with ease... but I did not learn the language systematically.)

So, I'm not so much against romaji. I think you can learn a
language as a spoken language, with some phonetical guide with letters
you already know, as introduction, before fully commited to learn to
read the language in its proper characters and orthography...

(My son speaks Japanese fluently, but he does not (yet) read Japanese
fluently at all... I failed to teach him in proper age... he had too
much homeworks from home that age... 8( )

muchan

[Ben Bullock]

On Tuesday, 13 October 2015 21:43:30 UTC+9, Tzortzakakis Dimitris wrote:

> Your kanji name is
>
> 臑臨酉圖・闍奄存戯漸築
> which doesn't make any sense to me:-)

It doesn't make any sense to me either. It assigns kanji at random to
your name based on pronunciation. The only restriction is that I have
a list of "bad kanji" which it doesn't use unless it can't find any
alternative.

> normally my name is デミチリ・ジョジ　because I don't think any japanese
> people would bother pronouncing Tzortzakakis (even cretan people have
> trouble with it and call me Tzortzakis, Tzorbatzakis etc.)

I tried to enter that but found a problem where the program doesn't
like the middle dot. Replacing that with a space gives me, for
example,

Your kanji name is

豊眉埃・橲壽

Somehow the kanji meaning "dust" isn't in the list of bad characters,
perhaps in memory of Dusty Springfield. The other ones are quite good
fit for a name:

bountiful; excellent; rich
eyebrow
Japanese storax; used in proper names
longevity; congratulations

> Strangely enough my name in hebrew is דימיטריס ditto for my
> surname and besides that in hebrew you address people by their first
> name:-)

I thought perhaps it was a Greek name.

[Tzortzakakis Dimitris]

It IS a greek name indeed and comes from the greek Goddess Dimitria
which was the patron for wheat, and consequently, bread.(That's why
wheat and other grains are called in greek dimitriaka). I mean that
phonetically my name in hebrew is the same, even with the vowels and I
am sure it's correct because I asked in a hebrew site explicitly how my
name is in hebrew. I don't think any jew would understand Tzortzakakis,
anyway.

[enigma...@gmail.com]

I love it! Thanks so much!