The change is designed to halt the use of kirakira (shiny or glittery) names that have proliferated among parents hoping to add a creative flourish

Parents in Japan will no longer have free rein over the names they give their children, after the introduction this week of new rules on the pronunciation of kanji characters.

The change is designed to halt the use of kirakira (shiny or glittery) names that have proliferated among parents hoping to add a creative flourish to their children’s names – creating administrative headaches for local authorities and, in some cases, inviting derision from classmates.

While the revisions to the family registry act do not ban kanji – Chinese-based characters in written Japanese – parents are required to inform local authorities of their phonetic reading, in an attempt to banish unusual or controversial pronunciations.

  • Stern@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    All three babies born in Japan this year will breath a sigh of relief I’m sure.

  • njm1314@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    That really seems like a tool a government could use to abuse minority populations. Not to mention stagnate it’s culture.

    • a4ng3l@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Following the logic of one of my beloved enterprise data architect everything should use UUIDs as way of refer to an entity… so more like

      • a6a01005-b698-4344-a88b-06911ca71965
      • 5f763196-46a6-4f1d-b7b8-55d948eb6080

      Wouldn’t be practical to pronounce but otherwise no more problem of gimmicky names :)

  • DicJacobus@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    How many children unfortunate enough to have Elon Musk as their sperm donor have outlandish names/

  • ExLisperA
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    8 days ago

    Pikachu, Naiki (Nike), Daiya (Diamond), Pū (as in Winnie-the-Pooh) and Kitty

    Is that the worst they can come up with? They could learn a lot from Americans.