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Japanese female names linguan6/12/2023 I would say 80% of the time I can tell if a person is male or female by his/her name. Like English, we do have male names, female names, and gender-neutral names. ![]() When it comes to Korean, I will quote my colleague, Haewon Cho: As for the finer nuances of Japanese naming practices, I leave it to the Japanese wallahs who are reading this post to weigh in. Conversely, few (if any) Japanese men whom I know have given names that end in -ko 子 ("child infant tot young woman / geisha"). If I saw these names written down as "Mǎlì 玛丽" (lit., "agate / cornelian pretty / beautiful") and "Dàwèi 大卫" (lit., "large / big / strong guard / defend / protect"), I'd be close to 100% sure that they are respectively female and male.Ī word of caution: if you haven't been told explicitly that so and so is male or female, best not to make any assumption about their gender on the basis of their given name in Mandarin, especially not by sound alone,Īs for Japanese, I will put it this way: most Japanese women I know have given names that end in -ko 子 ("child infant tot young woman / geisha"). If I hear a name like "Mǎlì 玛丽" ("Mary") or "Dàwèi 大卫" ("David"), which are obviously modeled on English gendered given names, I will feel fairly confident that they are respectively female and male, but even then I wouldn't bet on it. Similarly, if the characters used to write a person's name have weapon radicals and mean something like "martial" or "heroic", they are likely to be male, but I wouldn't bet on it, even if I saw the name written down in characters, because it's possible that the parents wanted their daughter to be a Joan of Arc or Mulan type warrior woman. ![]() Again, though, you wouldn't reliably be able to determine that just by hearing their name spoken aloud without seeing the characters. For example, if the characters have a "grass" or "woman" radical and mean things like "fragrant" or "pretty", chances are good that the person is female. In some cases, you can make a reasonable guess at a person's gender if you see the characters used to write their name. Normally you cannot tell a person's gender simply by hearing their name spoken aloud in Mandarin. And what is the case with Japanese first names? Here, I suspect that the names are gendered, although of course I don't know. I wonder– are first names gendered in Mandarin? That is, is it possible to tell that Tse-tung or Wai-wai are masculine names? Given the extraordinary proliferation of Chinese first names, I rather doubt it.
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