Singularity on the Plane

In Japanese, people and place names are usually written in Kanji. Because most kanji have more than one reading, the issue of homophone and homograph comes into play. In general, even with practice we cannot be 100% certain how a person’s name should be written (given the sound) and read (given the kanji).

As an example of homophone, compare 加護亜依 (Kago Ai) with 高橋愛 (Takahashi Ai). Both person have "Ai" as their given name, but they are written differently (亜依 v.s. 愛).

As an example of homograph, compare 高橋愛 (Takahashi Ai, again) with 村上愛 (Murakami Megumi). Both person’s given name is written 愛 but read differently (Ai v.s. Megumi).

With all that trouble, it is not surprising that there is a dictionary of Japanese names called Enamdict. It is maintained by Jim Breen, the same person behind EDICT and KANJIDIC. The format is compatible with EDICT, so my EdictReader can directly load it:

I downloaded ENAMDICT to know the reading of 垢石, a name I encountered at Aozora Bunko (it is read "kouseki"). At first I thought it only contains list of family and given names. However the documentation states that there is also "full (family plus given) name of a particular person". Simple checking shows that "Koizumi Jun’ichirou" and "Oda Nobunaga" are in. What surprised me was that Hello! Project artists are in, from Morning Musume members like "Fujimoto Miki" to soloists like "Matsuura Aya". Professional go players are also there, from the legendary "Go Seigen" to "Umezawa Yukari". Very creepy!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 5:53 pm by Agro Rachmatullah and is filed under Go, Japanese. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.