Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 October 10

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October 10

Japanese female names

Why do some Japanese female names end in -uko but no Japanese male names do so? Futurist110 (talk) 07:39, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

The -ko element (the preceding -u- is not part of it) means "beautiful" and is culturally applied mostly to females. Some male names do end in -ko (with a different meaning and written with a different kanji), but it's (now) rare and most that do are actually ending in -hiko meaning "boy": For details see the text in the section 'Characters' of the article Japanese name. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.121.162.83 (talk) 11:03, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

子 (ko) means "child"; 美 (bi) is "beauty". —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 14:05, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Tenryuu is of course correct: I initially misread the article and thought both meanings applied, and then botched the edit before publishing. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.121.162.83 (talk) 09:07, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Some of the few useful rules of thumb which can be applied to Japanese names written in the Latin alphabet are that names ending in "-uo" are usually masculine, and that names with an even number of syllables (technically "moras") preceding a final "-ko" are usually feminine (it's slightly less true for names with an odd number of syllables/moras preceeding a final "-ko")... AnonMoos (talk) 14:27, 10 October 2020 (UTC)