Daimyo Adult Name Generator

On the 7th day after its birth, the newborn received its birth name. For a boy of samurai parentage, he received his adult name at a coming-of-age ceremony called genpuku. On this day he also received his first set of adult clothes, and his hair was cut in the proper samurai style. Traditions changed over time, and each region and each clan had their own customs, so genpuku occurred sometime between the ages of 11 and 17, usually on some auspicious day.

Again, customs differed from clan to clan, and changed over time, but the progeny's adult name was usually selected by a clan elder in consultation with other members of the family. It was also not unusual for him to confer with fortune tellers and elders from the local temple.

For girls the coming-of-age ceremony was called mogi, and occurred sometime between the ages of 12 and 14. On this day the girl similarly received her first adult clothes, and had her eyebrows shaved and her teeth blackened.

Family names are usually two kanji characters, occasionally one or three. It is usually taken from the area where the family originally settled, usually the name of the village, sometimes the nearby mountain or river.

Given names are practically always two kanji characters. It is rarely just one, and I do not recall ever seeing a given adult name with three. Each kanji is usually a two syllable sound, occasionally one or three.

It is most usual for the first character to be the same as that of the father, and a new kanji selected for the second. Less usual is to keep the second character and change the first. Rarer still is for a clan to customarily use new kanji for both characters.

To randomly generate kanji for daimyo, use the following tables. The tables were created by surveying all the daimyo names in Edo 300 Han HTML Charts, and eliminating a few of the most obscure characters. You may pick and choose from these lists, e.g., by keeping the first character of the father and select the second kanji, or randomly generate one.

Table 1 is for the first kanji character. There are 200 kanji on this list. To randomly select one using dice, firstly roll any even-sided die, and if the result is an odd number, select from the ones numbered 100 to 199, and if even, select from the ones numbered 200 to 299. Secondly use a D100 (roll a 10-sided die twice) to generate a number from 00 to 99 to determine the last two digits.

There are almost 1000 kanji characters in Table 2. To generate the second kanji of a name, roll a D1000 (roll a 10-sided die three times) to randomly generate a number from 000 to 999.

The final step is to come up with a creative and auspicious reason for name. Part of the kanji meaning is noted on the second line. Keep in mind that this adult name is given at a coming-of-age ceremony so the youth will well-remember the reason given.

As you can see from the list, each potential character sound often have many different kanji that have the same pronunciation. Likewise, each kanji can have more than one articulation. The number to the right of each character pronunciation is the kanji number as listed in P.G. O'Neill's Essential Kanji. The number in parenthesis that follow the kanji number is the number of brush strokes it takes to draw the character. This may be pertinent: if a boy's lucky number is deemed to be five, for instance, a kanji with five strokes may be selected. 

My given name is Tadashi, and there are several kanji that can render this articulation; likewise the kanji character that was selected for my name (see Table 1, roll 052) has different ways it can be pronounced, most often as "masa." Yes, this is confusing, and it is safe to say that not all pronunciations of daimyo names are known for certain. The Japanese love poetry and no doubt many poetic licenses were taken with names at all levels of society.

Note that these tables generate daimyo-level names. Although many randomly-generated names from these tables may be appropriate for non-daimyo samurai, they have different conventions, such as names ending in -émon that daimyo did not use for their sons.

Likewise, using these tables will not necessarily generate appropriate daimyo names. There is no case where the two kanji characters of a daimyo name is the same, even though each character may be pronounced differently. I also have not seen an instance where the sounds of each of the two kanji in a name are the same, e.g., Masamasa. Even though kanji combinations generated for a daimyo name may seem odd to a Japanese, keep in mind that there are always exceptions to the rule, and eccentricity is not uncommon in Japanese society. The way of the gamer is with the roll of the dice, so it may be more fun and creative to work with whatever name you randomly generate using these tables.

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Last modified: February 28, 2010