Let’s write your name in Chinese characters

For many Japanese, it’s really important to choose among the vast number of Chinese characters, when they decide their child’s or their grandchild’s name. There are tons of Chinese characters which have the same pronunciation, but different meanings. For example, there are three Chinese characters and all of them are pronounced HASHI in Japanese.

橋 ← This HASHI means Bridge in Japanese.

端 ← This HASHI means Edge, End or Marge.

箸 ← This HASHI is Chopstick.

Japanese also care about the character’s stroke count. In Japan, there is a kind of name fortune telling, “姓名判断（Seimei Handan).” People’s fortunes are read from the number stroke in the character. There are super lucky numbers, pretty good numbers or horrible numbers.

As you can see in the picture above, there are some patterns of combinations which read your fortunes from the different angles. This “Seimei Handan” is favored among older people than younger people. They know it’s a superstition, but they hope to give their child or grandchild a lucky name or happy life by choosing the perfect Chinese characters and the excellent number strokes. Maybe they want to do everything that they can do for their precious ones. If I were them I would do the same thing. Many people care about it, not only when they decide personal name, but also when they decide their company’s name. In this way, many Japanese have to think about the meaning and stroke count of Chinese characters. So, they think really hard and take a long time when they choose the name. Actually, even though when we choose Hiragana or Katakana, we care about their stroke count, too.

These are a list of good or bad numbers for one’s personal name fortune. (Generally, it’s said that when you decide your company’s name, the good numbers are different from the personal names’ ones.)

最大吉(Sai Dai Kichi) : Super Excellent — 6, 15, 24, 31, 47 and 63.

大吉(Dai Kichi) : Very Good — 1, 3, 5, 11, 13, 16, 21, 23, 29, 32, 33, 37, 39, 41, 45, 52, 65, 67 and 68.

吉(Kichi) : Good — 7, 8, 17, 18, 25, 35, 38, 48, 57, 58, 61, 71, 73, 75, 77 and 78.

凶(Kyou) : Not Good — 14, 22, 26, 27, 28, 30, 42, 43, 46, 49, 50, 51, 53, 55, 56, 59, 72 and 74.

大凶(Dai Kyou): Bad — 2, 4, 12, 34, 36, 40, 44, 54, 60, 62, 64, 66, 69, 70, 76, 79 and 80.

最大凶(Sai Dai Kyou) : Very Bad — 9, 10, 19 and 20.

※ About more details of the numbers, you can check on the URL below. (but only in Japanese)　

More details of the numbers

There are several different ways to count the character stroke or read your fortune by character stroke count. So, don’t be depressed, even if your stroke number is not good. If you check your name on a different web site, you might find a different result.

If you’re interested in writing your name in Chinese character, please check the list below. These are names that I could change into Chinese characters. I want you to make sure that I decided the Chinese characters by only the pronunciation. It means that I didn’t care about the meaning of them. And more, I can’t guarantee anything even if something happens to you because of using the names from the list.

I want you to enjoy looking at the list, just for fun. I hope you can find your name in it!