Since I started playing Kana - Little Sister, I wondered about the true meaning of the names of the protagonists. Finally I decided to take the time and look up the kanji characters, and this is what I found out.

藤堂 加奈 (Todo Kana): wisteria-hall increase-endure

藤堂 隆道 (Todo Takamichi): wisteria-hall high-street

霧原 香奈 (Kirihara Cana): fog-plain incense-endure

霧原 須摩子 (Kirihara Sumako): fog-plain necessary-friction-child

鹿島 夕美 (Kashima Yumi): deer-island evening-beauty

近藤 美樹 (Kondo Miki): near-wisteria beauty-tree

伊藤 勇太 (Ito Yuta): he-wisteria courage-big

長瀬 智樹 (Nagase Tomoki): chief-shallows intellect-tree

船津 育郎 (Funatsu Ikuro): boat-harbour raise-son

下田 雅敏 (Shimoda Masatoshi): low-field elegant-nimble

The names used in the game are common Japanese names, but some of them fit really well with the game characters, don't they? Poor Kana has indeed 'more to endure', while Taka follows a 'noble path' protecting her. Tomoki stands as a 'tree of intellect', and Yumi makes a nice 'beauty of the evening'.

Since I'm not an expert, I can't give any guarantee for the correctness of the interpretation. If I misinterpreted some of the kanji, feel free to correct me.

I'm not an expert either. But I'm pretty sure that names have two levels of meaning in Japanese.

There's the meaning of the name, as spoken. Yumi means 'beauty', for example.

Then there's the meaning of the characters (kanji or hiragana) that were chosen to write that name. The same name can be spelt in different ways. Yumi Kashima's name is spelt with the characters for 'evening beauty', but there might be another Yumi out there whose name is spelt with entirely different kanji.

The spelling of the name is significant, but it's only one facet of the name. The meaning of the name as a whole is probably just as (if not more) important.

Indeed there are at least nine different Japanese female names that are all pronounced 'Yumi', but each one spelled with different kanji; in addition to our Yumi (夕美), these are:

由美, 由実, 裕美, 祐美, 優美, 友美, 有美 and 有実.

Though they all sound the same, each one of these names has a slightly different meaning and would be accompanied by different connotations.

Of course I just put the literal meaning of the single kanji in the list I made up, because I could not include the connotations these names would have for a Japanese reader. Since I've just recently started to learn a little bit about the language, I'm not yet able to understand all these hidden reminiscences.

Just one example: Masa's surname 'Shimoda' (下田). The literal meaning of the kanji would be something like 'a rice field with low produce'. But in certain contexts the character '下' can have the meaning 'dirty', 'obscene' as well. And since that fits very well with Masa's personality, a Japanese reader would be reminded of this when he comes across that name.

Interesting that there are so many kanji for the first syllable of Yumi's name, but it's always the same for the second syllable. I guess the second character is the important one for the 'beauty' meaning of the name.

I must admit that the Japanese system of writing has always struck me as overly complicated. At least with English, if you've never seen the word before you still have some chance of being able to pronounce it. But with kanji, either you know how it's read or you don't.

And even then, there can often be more than one reading for a particular kanji character, making it even worse. Because the characters were borrowed from the Chinese language, there's a Chinese pronunciation and a Japanese pronunciation, and different rules as to when you use the Chinese or Japanese reading.

It just makes me really glad that I have no reason to need to learn the Japanese language. Sure, I'd like to be able to speak it, because I think it would be cool. But part of me knows that I would never be able to master it.

Written and spoken Japanese are two wholly different beasts. For example, with spoken it's delivery as opposed to too much context, where it's the opposite for written

That said, Japanese is still a worthwhile language to learn...even if you do it via Rosetta Stone or something like the DS learning series

Writing Japanese is the one thing that is killing me to this date, some 3 years after actively pursuing the idea of learning the language. I still cannot memorize the hiragana and katakana, let alone working with kanji, with enough proficiency to recall the correct usages, and don't even get me started on the sub-kanas . It is still a nice thing that romanji is a widely used, if somewhat looked down upon, form of bridging the language gap.

Something you have to be aware of with things like Yumi's name is region to which the family came from. For example, 由 is rarely used when regarding to too many proper names in most of the areas I know of, and it is usually substituted with 夕. Rarer still, is the use of 祐 as a 'yuu' instead of the suke...but again, that's mainly a regional fare.

Most of the subtle things is similar to how most English-speaking languages have subtle dialects in vocal patterns, the Japanese are more usage patterns that are the subtle differences. The problem is that when someone says one thing, it can easily be something similar but totally different (in an oxymoronic way) to someone else.

For example;
彼は理由もなしに私を侮辱した。
Roughly that's "he was insulted", but to some others it could easily be "his insult was great", or "an insult has come to him". Now the funny part is when you break that down into something like romanji...kareha riyuu monashini watashi wo bujoku shita, then further break that back into English, He insult was put on him. Funner still is if you were to translate it back from "He insult was put on him" back

Actually there are two slightly different kanji representing the second syllable: mostly it's 美, meaning 'beauty', and somtimes it's 実 (with the little 'roof' on top), meaning 'fruit'.


Well, sometimes it looks indeed like the Rosetta Stone to me - for example, I might happen to run across something like that:



What is written on the sign behind Kana? I won't rest until I know. And slowly, step by step, the secret gets unveiled: it says 'three-village-middle-school'. I still have no idea if this has to be pronounced 'Sangō-chūgakkō' or rather 'Misato-chūgakkō', though.

In this thread: Darkling shows his inability to distinguish between similar kanji.

So Yumi's name could have been spelled 'evening fruit', hmm? Ah, she's the apple of her parents' eye, even if she does go a little bananas from time to time.

Another question - why is he dropping Kana off at school at one in the afternoon?

That problem sounds familiar. Normally I need to enlarge Japanese characters at least up to 16 or 20 point, before I try to decipher them - and even then I might continue to mistake them for another.

When pronounced 'jitsu', the kanji 実 for 'fruit' can have the meaning 'truth' or 'honesty' as well. I guess that connotation is the reason why it's used in given names.

Actually at first I did wonder about the time on the clock when I saw that graphic while playing KLS. But since they used the very same background for the scenes where Taka is picking up Kana after school, obviously they had to come up with a compromise.

Well, after analyzing the meaning of Yumi's name maybe we should let her have the last word in this discussion herself:
http://www.cd-bros.co.jp/takayashiki/soft/kana/data/yumi04.mp3.
If I understood this correctly, Yumi is introducing herself here.