Japanese Personal Name Variants

Approximately 3.5 million entries

Covers many romanization systems

Gender classification codes

Overview

CJKI’s Database of Japanese Personal Name Variants (JNV) includes approximately 3.5 million entries of Japanese given names and surnames and their variants, and covers all major and some minor romanization systems for romanizing Japanese. The dataset also includes various popular and “hybrid” variants.

The reason for so many variants of Japanese first names and last names are numerous, including the presence or absence of apostrophes (Kenichi, Ken’ichi), multiple ways of representing long vowels and certain consonants (tō, tou, too, to, toh for とう), the mixing of different Japanese romanization systems, and others. If these variants happen to combine in the same Japanese name, the number of permutations can increase significantly.

This database of variants of Japanese names is especially useful in English-Japanese machine translation, since the original English text can contain many unpredictable variants.

* Select one of the tabs below.

Japanese	Kana	Type	Roman	Frequency
高橋	たかはし	S	Tacahashi	0000000483
高橋	たかはし	S	Tacahasi	0000000279
高橋	たかはし	S	Takahachi	0000002770
高橋	たかはし	S	Takahaschi	0000000416
高橋	たかはし	S	Takahashi	0002390000
高橋	たかはし	S	Takahasi	0000040300
高橋	たかばし	S	Tacabashi	0000000000
高橋	たかばし	S	Tacabasi	0000000000
高橋	たかばし	S	Takabachi	0000000016
高橋	たかばし	S	Takabaschi	0000000001

The principal and other systems that JNV supports are as follows. The examples are for the name 大津 (おおづ) and 山口 (やまぐち).

System	Example	Description
Hepburn	Ōzu	The most widely used system, in several variations as shown in the table below.
Kunrei	Ôzu	The official Japanese government system that has become an ISO standard (ISO 3602).
Nippon	Ôdu	The predecessor of the Kunrei system but still in use.
Waapuro	Ouzu	Based on popular input methods.
English	Ozu	The most common English spelling based on Hepburn with long vowels omitted.
Germanic	Jamagutschi	German based romanization.
Romance	Yamagutchi	Romance language based romanization.
Variants	Oozu Ohzu Oodu Oudu Ohdu Odu	Miscellaneous variants of each system, such as the different flavors of Hepburn.

The standard, official Hepburn system is called Revised Hepburn, but some of the other variants shown below are just as popular.

Kanji	Kana	Eng.	Rev.	Mod.	Trad.	Pass.	Waa.	Var.
佐藤	さとう	Sato	Satō	Satoo	Satō	Satoh, Sato	Satou	Satô
大津	おおづ	Ozu	Ōzu	Oozu	Ōzu	Ohzu, Ozu	Oozu	Ôzu
井生	いおう	Io	Iō	Ioo	Iō	Ioh, Io	Iou	Iô
伊大地	いおおじ	Ioji	Iōji	Iōji	Iōji	Iohji, Ioji	Iooji	Iôji
天満屋	てんまんや	Tenman’ya, Tenmanya	Tenman’ya, Tenmanya, Tenman-ya	Tenman’ya, Ten̄man̄ya	Tenman’ya	Tenman’ya, Tenmanya, Tenman-ya	Tenmanya
山陰房	さんいんぼう	San’inbo, Saninbo	San’inbō, Saninbō, San-inbō	San’inboo, Saninboo, San̄in̄boo	San’imbō, Sanimbō	San’imboh, Sanimboh, San-imboh, San’imbo, Sanimbo, San-imbo	Saninbou	San’inbô, Saninbô, San-inbô, San’imbô, Sanimbô, San-imbô
本間	ほんま	Honma	Honma	Honma, Hon̄ma	Homma	Homma	Honma
淳一郎	じゅんいちろう	Jun’ichiro, Junichiro	Jun’ichirō, Junichirō, Jun-ichirō	Jun’ichiroo, Junichiroo, Jun̄ichiroo	Jun’ichirō, Junichirō	Jun’ichiroh, Junichiroh, Jun-ichiroh, Jun’ichiro, Junichiro, Jun-ichiro	Junichirou	Jun’ichirô, Junichirô, Jun-ichirô
山口	やまぐち	Yamaguchi	Yamaguchi	Yamaguchi	Yamaguchi	Yamaguchi	Yamaguchi
愛子	あいこ	Aiko	Aiko	Aiko	Aiko	Aiko	Aiko

Kanji	Kana	English	Hepburn	Kunrei	Nippon	Variants	Hybrids	Germanic	Latin
佐藤	さとう	Sato	Satō	Satô	Satô	Satoo, Satou, Satoh
青塚	あおづか	Aozuka	Aozuka	Aozuka	Aoduka	Aozuca	Aoduca
愛子	あいこ	Aiko	Aiko	Aiko	Aiko	Aico
生越	いくごし	Ikugoshi	Ikugoshi	Ikugosi	Ikugosi	Icugosi	Icugoshi	Ikugoschi	Ikugochi
大津	おおづ	Ozu	Ōzu	Ôzu	Ôdu	Oozu, Ouzu, Ohzu, Oodu, Oudu, Ohdu, Odu	Ōdu
井生	いおう	Io	Iō	Iô	Iô	Ioo, Iou, Ioh
伊大地	いおおじ	Ioji	Iōji	Iôzi	Iôzi	Iōzi, Ioozi, Iouzi, Iohzi, Iozi, Iooji, Iouji, Iohji, Iôji
橋本	はしもと	Hashimoto	Hashimoto	Hasimoto	Hasimoto			Haschimoto	Hachimoto
青柳塘	あおやぎとう	Aoyagito	Aoyagitō	Aoyagitô	Aoyagitô	Aoyagitoo, Aoyagitou, Aoyagitoh		Aojagito
天満屋	てんまんや	Tenman’ya	Tenman’ya	Tenman’ya	Tenman’ya	Temman’ya, Temmanya, Temman-ya, Tenmanya, Tenman-ya		Tenman’ja, Tenmanja, Tenman-ja

The table below shows the 169 variants of Jun’ichirō, classified roughly by rank, many of which are high frequency and in widespread use.

ID	Type	Roman	Rank
LS038	VARIANT	Junichiro	A
LS001	ENG	Jun’ichiro	A
LS039	VARIANT	Jun-ichiro	A
LS041	VARIANT	Junichirô	A
LS093	HYBRID	Juniciro	A
LS002	HEPBURN	Jun’ichirō	A
LS059	VARIANT	Jun-ichirō	A
LS033	VARIANT	Junichirou	B
LS032	VARIANT	Jun’ichirou	B
LS034	VARIANT	Jun-ichirou	B

Practical Applications

JNV is used for identifying Japanese personal name variants and is useful in such applications as:

Japanese Personal Name Variants

Approximately 3.5 million entries

Covers many romanization systems

Gender classification codes

Overview

Practical Applications

Query processing by search engines

Immigration control systems

Segmentation and morphological analysis

Anti-money laundering (AML)

Entity and information extraction

Improving accuracy of machine translation

Database cleansing and normalization

Security applications

Reference Documents

The Challenges of Intelligent Japanese Searching

Related Resources

Japanese-English Personal Names

Korean-Japanese Personal Names

Chinese Personal Name Variants