Table of Contents
Translations of Names
This article lists a random assortment of names that I translated into other languages. Currently, it’s limited to translations in Japanese.
The Transliterations of Names article is a counter-part to this one.
Note: I’m thinking of finding some way of reorganizing this page. Not because it’s messy, but because variant names and whatnot just don’t really work. Currently, variant names and names with the same meaning are all included together. But I’m thinking of properly separating them.
Introduction
Some time in the past I was curious as to what my name would be if translated into Japanese, but, to my disappointment, I only found transliterations of my name. This was when I decided to just do it myself.
The ‘how’ was not as difficult as I thought. To translate a name, you simply find the meaning of the name, and then find a word that represents that meaning in another language.
It turned out that my name has a rather complicated meaning, so I decided to go at much simpler names first. Eventually, I will be able to say ‘that’s my name right there!’ but, for now, that won’t be possible.
Japanese
A
- Aenor
- Alicia (and variants thereof)
- This name means ‘nobility’1), so I believe it would be:
君子 - (Kimiko) - ‘noble’ with a feminine suffix.
- Arthur
- This name has one of three possible meanings1), and I believe that each of them can be translated like so:
- Artorius has an unknown meaning, but I did find a proposal on Wikipedia suggesting it means ‘Descendant/family of the Assembler’2) - I’ll simplify this as ‘assembler’:
- ‘Bear’ or ‘Bear man’:
熊 - ‘Bear’B)
- The third possibility is that Arthur derives from an old Irish word meaning ‘stone’. I’m currentlyC) having difficulty locating this particular one.
E
- Estelle
- Variants:
- This name means ‘star’1) in the original lingua. So I believe it would work as:
星 - (Hoshi) - meaning ‘star.’
K
- Keira/Ciara
- This one means ‘black’1) in the original lingua - I think I can safely say this would become:
黒 - (Kuro) - which means ‘black’.
- However, it should not be forgotten that ‘Ciara’ is a feminine version of the original word. So, logically, the translation should also be feminized:
黒子 - (Kuroko) - Which means ‘black girl/child’ D).
L
- Lancelot
- This name means ‘land’ (probably):
陸 - ‘land’
- Lilian (and variations thereof)
- This name is a variant of ‘Lily’1) which is a flower, and Japanese has a direct name:
百合 - (Yuri)
M
- Maybel (and variations thereof)
- This name means ‘lovable’1). 可愛い(Kawaii) is close in meaning to this so:
可愛 - (Ai)
N
- Niamh
- This name has the same meaning as Noor, so refer to that for translations.
- Noor (and variations thereof)
- This name means ‘light’1) in the original lingua, so I believe it would become:
光 - (Hikari) - which means ‘light.’
Trivilinks
- I use BehindTheName to find the meanings of names. I would use a proper etymological dictionary, but I don’t own any.
- I was gonna start adding some names translated to English, but I changed my mind (for now).