Asian Culture – The order of Japanese and Chinese names

Upon reviewing my stats on Site Meter, it appears that many people had visited my blog when search the following keywords:

• What is the first names of Arashi members?
• Arashi members first names
• What is Ohno Satoshi’s first name?

This is quite intriguing. Though, I am not surprised that this topic provides confusion to many people since the Western name structure differs.  Mainly due to the interchangeable order of Asian names.

In Eastern culture,  a name usually consist of one’s surname/family name followed by a given name. Middle names are not generally used.  However, many tend to Westernized their names by the “surname–given-name” order to “given-name–surname” to simplify the confusion.  Unfortunately, this does not provide clarity. Though, many talents such as the Arashi members use the “surname-given-name” order, publications and other media sources may use otherwise, depending on the statistics on trends, popularity, etc.

Here are some “surname–given-name” examples….

Japanese names

Let’s start with Matsumoto Jun (松本潤). Matsumoto (松本) is his surname while Jun (潤) is his given name.

Here are additional examples with the rest of the Arashi members!

Surname	First/Given Name
Ohno (大野)	Satoshi(智)
Sakurai (櫻井)	Sho (翔)
Aiba (相葉)	Masaki (雅紀)
Ninomiya (二宮)	Kazunari (和也)

Japanese names are usually written in kanji, which are characters of Chinese origin with Japanese pronunciation. Additional forms of the Japanese writing system include hiragana or katakana. Thus, a name could be written in several forms:

Romaji	Kanji	Hiragana
Matsumoto Jun	松本潤	まつもと　じゅん
Ohno Satoshi	大野智	おおの さとし
Ninomiya Kazunari	二宮和也	にのみや かずなり
Sakurai Sho	櫻井翔	さくらい しょう
Aiba Masaki	相葉雅紀	あいば まさき

Chinese names

Damian Lau Chung-Yan (劉松仁) will be the example. Lau (劉) is his surname while Chung-Yan (松仁) is his given. In most cases, the English name is placed prior to the full Chinese name, however, it could be less significant in some countries, and placed afterwards.

The Chinese writing system also consist of two forms – traditional and simplified. Traditional Chinese is mostly used in the Republic of China (Taiwan), Hong Kong and Macau, as well as in overseas Chinese communities. Simplified Chinese was adopted People’s Republic of China in the 20th century.

Traditional Chinese	Simplified Chinese
劉松仁	刘松仁

Hope you enjoy this very mini lesson as much as I did writing it. I’m thinking about writing some more every now and then, just for the fun of it. Free free to comment, I would love to hear your thoughts, both good and bad.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Arashi’s Face Down
• Arashi’s Tokeijikake No Umbrella
• Congrats to Aiba-chan and Sho!!
• Arashi’s Ninomiya Kazunari Announces Marriage
• First Tweets from Arashi Part 2