Baby Name: Ema

The East Asian island nation of Japan, the 11th most populous country in the world, is currently experiencing population decline due to a low birth rate. Last year, Japan welcomed just 770,747 babies. This year, the count will likely be even lower.

Japan doesn’t release official baby name rankings, but the most popular names in the country right now include Himari and Ema for girls, and Ao and Haruto for boys.

How do we know this?

Because, every year, two Japanese companies — Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company and Benesse Corporation — come up with unofficial baby name rankings for Japan using their own data (i.e., the names of the newborns of their own customers/clients).

• Meiji Yasuda Life’s 2023 rankings account for 6,951 baby girls and 6,957 baby boys born in Japan from January to September, 2023.
• Benesse’s 2023 rankings account for 141,857 baby girls and 143,259 baby boys born in Japan from January 1 to September 27, 2023.

Each company releases two sets of rankings, in fact.

Why two? Because Japanese names, written using kanji (Chinese characters), are notoriously difficult to read; many have multiple potential pronunciations. So the companies rank baby names both as they’re written and as they’re said aloud (“readings”).

Below you’ll find a whopping eight sets of rankings. They account for two genders, two sources, and two ways of judging popularity: written vs. readings. (I had to turn the rankings into images because my blogging software can’t handle Chinese and Japanese characters.)

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Girl names (written)

According to Meiji Yasuda Life, these are Japan’s top girl names. Common readings are in parentheses.

[The readings are: Himari, Hinata, Hina; Rin; Tsumugi; Yua, Yuna; Yuina, Yuna; Mio; Mei; Koharu; Hina, Haruna; Ema; Sui, Midori; Yuzuki; Ai, Mana; and Iroha.]

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According to Benesse, these are Japan’s top girl names. Benesse also offered each name’s most common reading (transcription in parentheses).

[The readings are: Himari, Rin, Sui, Tsumugi, Yuina, Hina, Mei, Aoi, Yua, and Riko.]

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Girl names (readings)

According to Meiji Yasuda Life, these are Japan’s top girl-name readings:

[The readings are: Ema, Tsumugi, Mio, Sana, Mei, Koharu, Rio, Ichika, Himari, and Rin.]

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According to Benesse, these are Japan’s top girl-name readings:

[The readings are: Ema, Tsumugi, Sana, Mio, Mei, Koharu, Rio, Yui, Aoi, and Himari.]

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Boy names (written)

According to Meiji Yasuda Life, these are Japan’s top boy names. Common readings are in parentheses.

[The readings are: Ao, Aoi; Haruto, Hinato; Dan, Haru; Ritsu; Aoi, So, Ao; Soma, Fuma; Ren; Nagi, Nagisa; Minato; and Minato.]

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According to Benesse, these are Japan’s top boy names. Benesse also offered each name’s most common reading (transcription in parentheses).

[The readings are: Ren, Ao, Haruto, Minato, Aoi, Asahi, Nagi, Minato, Dan, and Ritsu.]

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Boy names (readings)

According to Meiji Yasuda Life, these are Japan’s top boy-name readings:

[The readings are: Haruto, Minato, Yuito, Aoto, Riku, Sota, Sora, Aoi, So, and Haruki.]

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According to Benesse, these are Japan’s top boy-name readings:

[The readings are: Haruto, Minato, Aoto, Riku, Yuito, Sota, Haruki, Sora, Hinata, and Aoi.]

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The boy names Ao and Ritsu were given a boost in 2023 by soccer players Ao Tanaka and Ritsu Doan, both of whom helped Japan’s national football team advance during the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

The names Tsumugi (female), Minato (male), and So/Sou (male) also rose in the rankings. They correspond to the names of characters on the popular drama/romance series Silent, which aired in Japan from October to December, 2022.

Finally, here’s a link to Japan’s unofficial 2022 rankings, if you’d like to compare this year to last year.

P.S. Though none of the names above would be considered kira-kira names — that is, names with highly unorthodox readings — an increasing number of Japanese babies have been given kira-kira names over the last few decades. (Two examples are Girisha and Torino, bestowed by Japanese athlete/politician Seiko Hashimoto in the early 2000s.) Japan recently decided to crack down on the usage of kira-kira names: a law change “will limit readings of the kanji in children’s names to those ‘generally recognizable by society.'”

Sources:

• Japan’s 2023 baby name rankings – Meiji Yasuda Life
• Japan’s 2023 baby name rankings – Benesse
• Hida, Hikari. “Japan to Limit Unusual Baby Names.” New York Times 1 Dec. 2023.
• “Himari and Ao: Japan’s Top 2023 Baby Names.” Nippon.com 7 Dec. 2023.
• Inoue, Yukana. “Popularity of gender-neutral Japanese names rose in 2023.” Japan Times 5 Dec. 2023.
• Japan – Wikipedia

Image: Adapted from Flag of Japan (public domain)