Lost in Transliteration

You can tell a lot from a person’s name. Assuming it is a name you are familiar with, you can almost always tell the gender of the person named. There is also a good chance you will be able to gather some hints about their age, socio-economic background, and perhaps even their race. In addition to the factual information the name may suggest, it may also invoke some stereotypes. Like it or not, a name can very much shape the way we are treated in life.

The information coded into names is just as significant in other languages we may not be familiar with. And, unfortunately, this is something that is lost completely when a name is left untranslated or is transliterated. This isn’t to say that the practice of leaving names as they are is wrong. It is just one of the truly inevitable losses in translation.

In today’s entry, I am going to take a look at some of the basic foundations of Japanese names, and some of the things that we can glean from them. From gender and age to birth order and socio-economic background.

Although there are a lot of trendy, modern exceptions, gender in Japanese names is usually very clear. Some of the most obvious involve traditional gender indicating suffixes. Names ending with 子 (ko) and 美 (mi) are always female. Names ending with 郎 (rou) or 助 (suke). A name with this sort of ending may also give a hint about the age. Just as with English names though, traditional names stay more popular with boys than with girls. Girl’s names ending with 子 were most popular between 1930 and 1980, peaking in 1945. Names ending with 美 were most popular 30 to 50 years ago. Boy’s names ending with 郎 and 助 are still relatively popular, they are traditional, but not too old-fashioned to name a baby.

More modern gender indicating suffixes are 菜 (na) and 香 (ka) for girls, and 翔 (to) for boys. These almost always indicate that the bearer of the name was born within the past 20 years. In the opposite direction, there are truly old names that tell you without a doubt that the bearer is going to be very old. In the case of a girl, while there is no straightforward rule, this would most likely be a name that is two characters and that is written without using kanji. Common “old woman” names are うめ (Ume), きん (Kin), and はな (Hana). Common “old man” names are often directly saying which son he was; 三郎 (Saburou, meaning third son), 四郎 (Shirou, fourth son), 五郎 (Gorou, fifth son) and so on.

And in much the same way as there are names often considered to be “lower class” or “chav names“, there are what are referred to as キラキラネーム (kirakira names, literally “sparkly names”). These are names that are considered to be attempts to stand out, by using characters and pronunciations that don’t match, or by giving a child an obviously strange name like “Angel” or “Silk” in English. This style of name is strongly associated with the poorly educated and the lower classes, leading to negative stereotypes.

As a final addition, the placeholder names in Japanese (similar to the John and Jane in John Doe and Jane Doe) are 太郎 (Tarou) for men and 花子 (Hanako) for women. They are about as clearly gendered as you can be in Japanese names.

My previous post focused on place names being transliterated into English. Now I would like to look at some place names already in English and how they can also lose their meanings. This sort of loss of meaning isn’t really transliteration; most of these place names have changed not through an attempt to render them into another writing format but instead through shifts in meaning and spelling over time. But a loss is still present as these names would have had clear meanings to those in the past. And, well, when a name comes from another language in which it had a meaning… is it really all that different from transliteration? I don’t think so.

As I live in Norwich, in England, I would like to take a look at a few local place names, their original meanings, and how those meanings have become lost over time. Many place names in this area derive from Viking roots, so it is fascinating to look at what they meant in the past. Invisible Works has a wonderful piece listing some of the components of Danish and Norse place names; many of which can still be seen today in the area. In this entry, I will be looking at Norfolk, Norwich, Cromer, and (my personal favourite) Tombland inside of Norwich.

Norfolk and Norwich are clearly related (both starting with Nor) but the meaning of Norfolk is far easier to guess from modern English. In both, nor means north or northern. Folk is also very straightforward, meaning people. Norfolk is “Northern folk”. The wich of Norwich, on the other hand, is a bit more complex. Wic (or vic) seems to have been an Anglo-Saxon term meaning a trading port. Most wic/wich towns were associated with markets, trading by ship, or salt production. While Norwich isn’t along the coast, it is on the Wensum river (its name derived from the Old English word for winding, wendsum) and was an inland port. So Norwich was a northern trading port, most likely with trading ships visiting from the sea via the river.

Cromer, though today known for its crabs and pier, has a name with no links to the sea at all. The name is thought to derive from Crows Mere – a (large and shallow) lake of crows. There was once a large shallow lake that was regularly frequented by crows, apparently in numbers significant enough to lend its name to the town that grew there.

And finally, Tombland. Although it is only the name of a part of Norwich and not a city or town, it is the place name that initially sparked my interest in local place names. Upon first glance, it appears to indicate something rather dark; an area filled with tombs. A few local residents told me that it was called that because it is where they dug the plague pits during the Black Death, and that there were mass graves scattered around the area. A bit of research showed this wasn’t the truth at all. While the “land” did indeed mean land, “tomb” in this case meant “open”. It was kept as open space in the city for use as a market, for fairs, and other activities.

As I am a Japanese-English translator, I would like to start by taking a look at some basic elements of Japanese place names and their meanings. As Japanese is an ideographic language, the way a place name is written will immediately convey information about that place to a reader. Place names in English, especially those that have been in place for a very long time, will often have been changed in spelling and pronunciation over the years and have lost their link to the literal meaning. This leaves behind only the connotations rather than the direct meanings (in most cases). I will take a look at some of those in more detail in the next entry. Today though, I would like to look at some of the basic building blocks of Japanese place names.

Let’s start with some of the most famous Japanese cities; Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Yokohama, and Hiroshima.

Tokyo is written in Japanese as 東京. The To (東) in this case being “east” and the Kyo (京) being capital. Tokyo is the eastern capital. By the same rules, you could come up with a western capital (Seikyo – 西京), a southern capital (Nankyo – 南京) or a northern capital (Hokkyo – 北京). In fact, all of those exist or have existed as Chinese cities (南京 and 北京 being Nanjing and Beijing. 西京 is a historical name for several different modern cities.) Immediately, based on the names themselves, we can get a decent idea of where they are geographically, and that they are or were the capitals of those areas. Already we can guess that they would be large and important cities. We might even assume that one might be warmer or colder than another. All of this is straightforward and obvious to a reader of Japanese or Chinese, but lost entirely when transliterated.

Kyoto, despite sounding like it might be made of the same pieces as Tokyo, is written as 京都. The Kyo is the same “capital” as in Tokyo, but the To in this case traditionally carried the meaning “imperial city” where the emperor lived. So Kyoto is the imperial capital city… or rather, it was the capital of Japan in the past before the capital was moved, you guessed it, to the east to make an eastern capital; Tokyo. In modern Japanese though, 都 refers to an administrative district; specifically the one that is the capital. This brings us to 東京都 (Tokyo-to), which is the “Eastern Capital Administrative District”.

Moving away from capitals and former capitals, we come to names that are linked more directly to the geographical features of the area. Osaka, Yokohama, and Hiroshima. Osaka is written as 大阪, the O being “big”, and the Saka meaning “hill”. Osaka is on a big hill, or was originally on a big hill as I am sure it has expanded far beyond wherever the original big hill used to be. Yokohama is 横浜, Yoko being “side” and Hama “beach”. It was a horizontal beach that sort of stuck out into the sea instead of following the coast of the “vertical” land. Hiroshima is 広島, Hiro meaning “wide” and Shima meaning “island”. It means a wide and spacious island. Hiroshima city itself is not on an island, but the prefecture it is the capital of (also called Hiroshima) has a long coast with numerous islands. The name is said to derive from that.

These city names will be recognised as the cities they refer to immediately by a native Japanese speaker, without much, if any, thought given in daily life to the meanings behind their names. But for less well-known locations, the names will provide vital hints. 東島 is likely going to be an island in the east. 大浜 is likely to be along the coast, with a long beach. If we throw in a few other commonly used place name parts like 崎 (“Saki”, point or cape), 山 (“Yama”, mountain), and 川 (“Kawa”, river) some fairly descriptive place names can be made. 広浜崎 would be the head of a wide beach. 山島 would be an island with a mountain.

But who would imagine any places like that just from reading the transliterations of “Hirohamasaki” or “Yamashima”?

I am sure everyone reading this has heard the phrase “lost in translation”. There is a major film and several books with that title. I think almost everyone is familiar with what translation is and (putting aside your opinions on it) the general concept of things being lost in the process. But what about transliteration? It is far less commonly used a word but it stands hand-in-hand with translation. I am sure it is encountered just as commonly as translation itself. And yet it seems to be forgotten, put to the side and not given much attention. So just what IS transliteration?

Transliteration is the conversion of words (usually names) from one writing system to another. The meaning is not translated, it is a simple change of writing forms. Any time you see a name from a country that uses an alphabet or writing system different to your own, that is a transliteration. Luxembourg is Lëtzebuerg in its native Luxembourgish. The Vietnamese city of Hanoi is written as Hà Nội in Vietnamese. Tokyo is not Tokyo in Japanese, it is 東京. It doesn’t have to be a distant language with a writing system completely incomprehensible to you; it can be from a language with only a few small differences, or perhaps even one that uses the same writing system but pronounces things differently. What matters is that it has been converted to a way of writing that you would pronounce in a way fairly similar to how it is read in the native language. (When the name has been changed to something different and it isn’t simply an attempt to make it readable in another language, it ceases to be transliteration and becomes an exonym. Think Florence instead of Firenze, or Hungary instead of Magyarország.)

This blog is going to focus specifically on things that aren’t translated. Translators are usually encouraged to leave names as they are, to transliterate them instead of translating them. Future entries are going to look mostly at things that are truly not able to be translated due to their very nature; names.

Names do have “translatable” meanings, of course. There is an entire industry dedicated to helping parents choose names for their children that carry specific meanings. But this doesn’t mean that it is wrong for the names to not the translated. Consider your own name, for example. How often do you think about its meaning through the day? If your name is David, do you know or think about the fact that it supposedly carries the meaning “beloved”? If your name is Sarah, how often do you gloat about people calling you “princess”? If these were characters in a book, or perhaps public figures in the news, having their names changed to “Beloved” or “Princess” would lead to a reader seeing them in a much different light.

It is the other connotations of names that matter most. They can give hints about age and background; You are unlikely to see a young (modern) character named Myrtle or Wilbur, or an elderly character named Khaleesi or Jayden. It is unlikely that a medieval princess will be called Ebony just as it is unlikely a time-traveller from Neo-Taipei will be named Bartholomew. A place name can tell you about what somewhere might be like; A town called Mudville is probably going to be rather different than one called Garden Hills.

These connotations are obvious to native speakers, but not to a reader of a translation in which they are left untouched or transliterated. Names in every country and every language have these types of associations. Every name carries some baggage, even if it is invisible to you as a reader of a translation. As a Japanese-English translator who regularly transliterates names, I want to shine some light on the things lost not necessarily in translation, but in transliteration.