How to use the Japanese Name Generator
Choose Any, Male, or Female for the given name, pick a name order, then click "Generate Names." Every result pairs a given name with a surname and shows what each part means. Click a name to copy it.
Given name first, or surname first?
In Japan, a person's surname is spoken and written before their given name — the reverse of the Western convention this site's visitors are more likely to expect by default. A name generated here as "Tanaka Haruto" in Japanese order becomes "Haruto Tanaka" in Western order, referring to the same two name parts either way. Neither order is more correct than the other; the choice mainly depends on which convention the name is meant to be read in.
Why every name shows its meaning
Japanese given names are typically built from characters chosen partly for their sound and partly for what they mean, and two names that sound similar can carry very different meanings depending on which characters were used to write them. This generator uses established, commonly documented meanings for each name rather than presenting names as bare labels. Surnames work differently: most Japanese surnames originated as descriptions of a place or geographic feature — Yamamoto, "base of the mountain," or Tanaka, "middle of the rice field" — rather than being chosen for a meaning the way a given name typically is.
What this generator does not cover
A few related tasks are genuinely different from what this tool does, and are not covered here: converting an existing English name into Japanese phonetically (a transliteration problem, not a name-generation one), generating a name written in kanji specifically, and naming a place — a city, region, or fictional Japanese-inspired setting — rather than a person. Each of these follows different rules and is a better fit for a dedicated tool.