Today at 20:47:40
joteofhell says: the most bad-ass man in the world! is turning 70??? no way!
Today at 20:39:45
VladD says: Happy 70-th birthday to Chuck Norris!
Today at 20:13:42
Kemm says: And JPB, one cannot decide his name (at least till coming of age), so the kanji are given by the parents. Usually they search names for their children by kanji, either for its meaning or taking the kanji from their own names.
Today at 20:10:30
Kemm says: The only non-kanji names are foreigner ones. Japanese with names written in kana do it only because they don't like their kanji or they want to look 'modern'. All names have a meaning, even western ones.
Otakkun, with new words, they do the same as us: 1) they make it from combination of existing words (therefore writing it with the kanji of those words), 2) they take a foreigner word (written in katakana) or 3) they make it from scratch (written in kana, either hiragana or katakana).
Today at 19:53:07
Ultimateking says: i'd say the probability of having a non-kanji name is around 50/50 ^^