The name you give to your child will stay with them for the rest of their life, so parents are always careful to choose one that will stand the test of time and carry them through to adulthood. In the United States, Sophia and Jacob took the top spots for baby names in 2013, while Ava and Noah took first place in the UK (depending on which site you consult). Let’s take a look at this year’s top 10 baby names in Japan as reported by Japanese pregnancy and parenting site, Tamahiyo.
I’m always hearing “ladies first” so let’s start off with the little girls:
“Airi” was especially popular this year, appearing in the top 10 twice with two different spelling variations. In Japan, naming your child takes on an additional hurdle because you not only have to choose a name, you also have to choose the kanji (Chinese characters) that make up that name. Those of you who can read kanji may have noticed that 愛, the Chinese character for “love,” is used in three of the top 10 names. Now on to the baby boys:
As you can see, “Haruto” appears on the list twice, but with different Chinese characters and the kanji “翔” appears three times in this year’s rankings.
So now that you’ve seen the results, what do you think of the top ten baby names in Japan? Will there be a little Hiroto or baby Yuina in your future?
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