Onamastics

[Suzuki Ken'ichi]

Disclaimer 1: I am a herald in the SCA. For the rest of the month, I'm the Baronial Herald in my barony. In spite of this, I tend to think that the College of Heralds has its collective head buried in pedantic garbage. I have little intention of ever registering another name.

Disclaimer 2: I know there's a book out there about Medieval Japanese name construction, and I intend to buy it, but I'm seriously broke at the moment....

I read Effingham-sensei's web page on Japanese names, and I've settled on Suzuki as a family name, which is listed on his page as active prior to 1600. (Plus? It means "bell tree," and my device involves a tree).

But I'm unclear on whether a low-rank Samurai of the Azumachi-Momoyama period would have a "no" before the given name, or how many given names he should have.

I'd like to use Suzuki Kenichi, but I can't seem to find any examples of the name Kenichi from before the twentieth century.

Is Kenichi an appropriate name? Should it be Suzuki no Kenichi?

My thanks for any guidance y'all can offer.

[bovil]

There are a bunch of other threads on this.

"no" was only used with Uji names. That's the real old "clans."

There's evidence "no" was rarely used in writing.

Register your name without the "no" and you'll have an easier time. If you're claiming connection to an Uji, go ahead and use "no" and explain it to people. Japanese in the society is a life of explaining things to other people, it's just one more thing on the stack.

[Please Delete]

As mentioned, you would probably just be Suzuki Ken? (we'll work on the rest, below). You wouldn't really use "no" at this point unless you were using the uji, as mentioned, and being somewhat pretentious, too, imo.

As for Ken'ichi; you know the spiel Are you interested in the name for meaning or sound?

"Ken'ichi"--it fits the general pattern. It is a shortened form of "Ken'ichirou", as I understand it. The problem is that we don't see "Ichirou" so much--we tend, instead, to see "Tarou" used for the first son (for those who don't know, "Ichi" is "1" and "Ta" is "Great"). So, "Kentarou" (Kenta?) would be the appropriate Sengoku period version of the name.

We could probably justify "Ken'ichi" if you really wanted it--it fits the pattern, but I haven't been able to find any examples of "Ichirou" being used before 1600.

If you like something about the sound more than anything else, here are some other options:

Kenji
Kenshi
Kenshin (this would actually be more of a "Buddhist" name--e.g. Uesugi Kenshin; note, you may get people making note of "Rurouni Kenshin" as well. Just know what baggage it has)

Possible constructions (I would need to look into it more to verify we could plausibly construct these):
Ken'i
Ken'in
Kennin

There are more possibilities, but there's a start.

-Ii

[Suzuki Ken'ichi]

One of the things I <em>really</em> like about Kenichi is the pun. Depending on the Kanji used, it can mean "Studious First Born" (which I am) or "First Sword," which I aspire to be. And, I guess, since I'm not actually planning to register the name, it doesn't so much matter that the Ichirou construction might not be strictly period.

Thank you both for the information about "no."

[solveig]

Noble Cousin!

Greetings from Solveig! The basic naming pattern for male members of the buke (military class) during the Sengoku period was to the best of my understanding:

<family name><common name><nanori>

That's right. Three names. The family name is most typically a locative (fancy word for place description) although other forms exist as well. The common name generally reflected birth order and could have a prefix. The nanori are most typically di-thematic (two kanji) and are most typically read using kun-yomi (native Japanese) readings.

Regardless, Suzuki should work as a family name.