Japanese names are hard

Japanese is hard. That's no secret. But to fully explain how hard it is, and why, requires a couple levels of explanation.

Fourteen centuries ago, scholars in Japan grafted the Chinese writing system into their pre-existing spoken language, despite Japanese using a different sentence order. They then approximated Chinese sounds as best they could to create new vocabulary.

It didn't work particularly well, because Chinese uses tones to differentiate words. How you say a word makes it different, kind of like "present" (gift) and "present" (to give). The best example is 买卖, which means meaning "buying and selling" or "trade". In Chinese, it's pronounced mǎimài. The only difference between "buying" and "selling" is the tone. But Japanese doesn't use tones, so what they heard was "baibai." The two opposites became completely indistinguishable.

That's level 1. The different sentence order and ambiguous pronunciations of Chinese words.

In this regards, Korean and Japanese have similar problems. In both Korean and Japanese, each imported Chinese character, 漢子, has a Chinese pronunciation (음/音) and a native meaning (훈/訓). If we did that in English, it would work like "山 pronounced 'san' and means 'mountain.'" "San" is the approximated pronunciation of the Chinese word, and "mountain" sets its meaning.

In Korean, it goes 山, 산, 뫼. In Japanese, it's 山, さん, やま. Among native speakers, Koreans and Japanese are kind of tied. Koreans use more complex versions of characters, but have fewer native descriptions for meanings. Japanese have more oppotunities to use and practice their characters, but often have multiple native definitions for their words.

For example, in Korean, 外 has only one Chinese pronunciation (외) and one description (바깥). Yet Japanese has a bunch. For the Chinese approximations, there's both がい and げ. And among Japanese native word usages, there's そと, ほか, and はず. They're not all equally common, but it makes guessing the pronunciation for a word difficult to guess.

That's level 2. All the different readings one has to learn for words that were imported up to 1,400 years ago.

Add on to that the fact that -- as an English speaker -- you also have to learn what these things mean in English.

The next way Japanese makes things difficult in in mixed usage of Chinese characters. In the 1400s, the Korean king at the time took pity on his subjects, and ordained that a better writing system be created -- one that better matches the Korean spoken language.

It took a while to fully catch on, but Korean now has a writing system that very nicely matches its sounds, so much so that the use of Chinese characters to convey meaning has been dropping off in recent generations.

In Korean, when you see Chinese characters in a newspaper or the subway, there's only one way to pronounce them. For example, 鶴川 is always "hak-cheon" (meaning "crane stream").

Japanese is different in that regard. If Japanese pronounced this word according to their imitation of Chinese sounds, 確川 would be "kaku-sen." It's different from Korean, but still guessable.

But no. Japanese often goes by its native words in their readings for those characters. A crane is a "tsuru," and a stream is a "kawa." So now you have four choices: kaku-sen, tsuru-gawa, kaku-gawa, and tsuru-sen. Which one is it? You can only take a guess.

Even if you know a Chinese character, its Chinese approximated pronunciation (音読み), and its meaning in Japanese (訓読み), you have no way of knowing which pronunciation to use. In this case, 鶴川 is a pronounced tsuru-gawa

That's level 3.

With Japanese names, it's downright impossible. The best example I can think if is from a Netflix series I watched called, "Love, Chunibyo, and other Delusions," (中二病でも恋がしたい). There's a character in there whose family name is 五月七日. Now, in any other context than someone's name, that would mean "May 7th," I would 100% pronounce that go-gatsu-nanoka.

But because it's a name, it's actually pronounced "Tsuyuri". I have no idea why.

It's even part of the discussion that comes up. The protagonist sees the name and looks kind of confused. "Your name is ... May 7th?" The girl corrects him with a smile, "That's pronounced 'Tsuyuri."

So even native Japanese speakers have a hard time with Japanese names if they're never seen them before. Not even the Japanese coworkers I asked knew about that name.

If even Japanese people have trouble with pronouncing words in their own language, you kind of have to throw your hands up in the air and say "Forget it."

That's level 4 difficulty.