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Why t males in Japan use feminine-meaning names like Hideharu(flower spring), Akihide(beautiful flower)?
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Those would be unusual meanings for a male name. I think you are mistaken about them.
The word for "flower" is "hana," not "hide."
Hide is often written with a character meaning "excellent" (秀) or "hero, outstanding" (英).
Haru does mean "spring" as a vocabulary word (春). It is not considered unmanly for a name to include a character for a season of the year. In names Haru is also often "rule, reign" (治) or "clear up" (晴).
Aki means "autumn" as a vocabulary word (秋), and in names often "bright, shining" (昭) or (明).
There are even more possibilities; Japanese kanji use in names is very flexible. But it's safe to say that "beautiful flower" is not a usual meaning for a man's name.
The word for "flower" is "hana," not "hide."
Hide is often written with a character meaning "excellent" (秀) or "hero, outstanding" (英).
Haru does mean "spring" as a vocabulary word (春). It is not considered unmanly for a name to include a character for a season of the year. In names Haru is also often "rule, reign" (治) or "clear up" (晴).
Aki means "autumn" as a vocabulary word (秋), and in names often "bright, shining" (昭) or (明).
There are even more possibilities; Japanese kanji use in names is very flexible. But it's safe to say that "beautiful flower" is not a usual meaning for a man's name.
This message was edited 2/11/2022, 7:05 AM
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Japanese names are used with a lot of different kanji combinations, with a lot of different resulting "meanings" Check this user-submitted name Akihide on this website, it gives quite a number of combinations, none of which as "beautiful flower":
https://www.behindthename.com/name/akihide/submitted
Seems to me you only have a valid phenomenon and then a question in its wake if you succeed to document several cases where males with the name Akihide actually use kanji combinations of "beauty" / "beautiful" and "flower".
https://www.behindthename.com/name/akihide/submitted
Seems to me you only have a valid phenomenon and then a question in its wake if you succeed to document several cases where males with the name Akihide actually use kanji combinations of "beauty" / "beautiful" and "flower".
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I don't think this is really relevant to the question. the names given are examples which may be considered hypothectical and not necessarily;y accurate in the details. Further i think it is misleading to assume the Kanji symbols used are a names "meaning". Ideographic systems such as Kanji present a number of different options for rendering something as personal as a name (and sometimes more regular words as well). The majority of forms will be fairly standard e.g. a name such as Subaru (the Pleiades) will have a standard set of Kanji which will e commonly used and which everyone will understand and be prone to use in a name. But a word/name may be rendered in other ways - using a combination of homophones that read separately mean something completely different; by the use of more or less obscure kennings that neither sound or mean the same as the name/word (in the case of words these need to be standardized or not too obscure, but personal names can be incredibly obscure in their use of such "riddles"); in the case of Kanji, they may be chosen based on the original Chinese pronunciation of the symbol, not the Japanese, and appear to mean something different again if read according to a normal Japanese interpretation. Do these alternate renderings change the meaning of a name? Not really.
None of which answers why some men will have seemingly female names. I don't know why it happens (although there are several possible mechanisms), or how common it is, but it does happen, and will cause raised eyebrows even in Japan. Adults will normally be polite, but kids can be cruel.
None of which answers why some men will have seemingly female names. I don't know why it happens (although there are several possible mechanisms), or how common it is, but it does happen, and will cause raised eyebrows even in Japan. Adults will normally be polite, but kids can be cruel.
This message was edited 2/11/2022, 7:37 AM
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Hypothetical examples don't work in this situation. Akihide and Hideharu don't sound female no matter how they are written. You would need to provide actual examples of "seemingly female" Japanese male names for anyone to address this in a more meaningful way.
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If one starts with the assumption that names of flowers are feminine, then Hinata would only be considered a "feminine" male name if it were written with the characters that mean "sunflower." That would be an irregular reading, as the vocabulary word for "sunflower" is not Hinata. So an example of a man whose name was Hinata written with the characters 向日葵 would have to be found.
This message was edited 2/13/2022, 7:06 AM
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