wherein Liz has fun with her total ignorance of Japanese

There is something addictive about playing with online translation dictionaries, even if they are rather incomplete in interesting ways. Also, I have a weird habit of inventing and naming about ten times more background characters than will ever appear in my stories (well, okay, sometimes they get a throwaway one-line mention, for color and verisimilitude) partially because I want to flesh out people's families, their classmates, their coworkers, etc., and partly because I'm just weird and obsessive like that.

It also hit me, a while ago, that Ayakawa is an odd name. That is to say, almost all the names I've made up for my Naruto fanfiction stories are deliberately built from actual words, but Ayakawa isn't. The ones I didn't make up, I stole from real people or other manga. (Naga is neither stolen nor made up with help from a dictionary -- it's not even Japanese, really -- but it's a snake-themed name and it's pronounceable in Japanese, so whatever.) Ayakawa, however, I just pulled out of thin air.

I think, if 'kawa' is meant to be 'river,' it should probably be written as 'gawa,' since it's in a compound word. I seem to recall seeing that done; it's like the way 'kane' (metal) becomes 'gane' in compounds; please correct me if I'm wrong. (I'm not switching the spelling in the stories, though; it would be too much bother at this point.) I also couldn't find any meaning for 'aya' so today I decided that it was originally 'ayu' but the pronunciation shifted. Therefore, 'ayakawa,' or 'ayugawa,' would mean something like 'freshwater trout river,' which amuses me to no end. :-)

Eiji's family name, 'Amane,' seems to work out to something along the lines of 'the price of linen' -- from 'ama' (linen/flax/hemp) + 'ne' (price/cost) -- which is equally amusing, and probably equally off-base, linguistically speaking. But you know something? I don't care -- it's a good name for a businessman, so I'm happy. I can't remember exactly where I stole the name from, offhand, but I do know I didn't pull that one out of thin air. It's funny that it turned out to be appropriate anyway.

Where was I...

Oh, yes. The original point of this was that I needed to name a minor character who became unexpectedly relevant to my plot outline -- Kafunnokaze's jounin-sensei (and if that's not a plot hint I don't know what is) -- and I wanted family names for two secondary characters associated with Eiji: Takeshi, one of his ship captains, and Rika, the harbormaster. (Harbor-mistress, really, but whatever.) And that is now done. *beams*

wherein Liz has fun with her total ignorance of Japanese

There is something addictive about playing with online translation dictionaries, even if they are rather incomplete in interesting ways. Also, I have a weird habit of inventing and naming about ten times more background characters than will ever appear in my stories (well, okay, sometimes they get a throwaway one-line mention, for color and verisimilitude) partially because I want to flesh out people's families, their classmates, their coworkers, etc., and partly because I'm just weird and obsessive like that.

It also hit me, a while ago, that Ayakawa is an odd name. That is to say, almost all the names I've made up for my Naruto fanfiction stories are deliberately built from actual words, but Ayakawa isn't. The ones I didn't make up, I stole from real people or other manga. (Naga is neither stolen nor made up with help from a dictionary -- it's not even Japanese, really -- but it's a snake-themed name and it's pronounceable in Japanese, so whatever.) Ayakawa, however, I just pulled out of thin air.

I think, if 'kawa' is meant to be 'river,' it should probably be written as 'gawa,' since it's in a compound word. I seem to recall seeing that done; it's like the way 'kane' (metal) becomes 'gane' in compounds; please correct me if I'm wrong. (I'm not switching the spelling in the stories, though; it would be too much bother at this point.) I also couldn't find any meaning for 'aya' so today I decided that it was originally 'ayu' but the pronunciation shifted. Therefore, 'ayakawa,' or 'ayugawa,' would mean something like 'freshwater trout river,' which amuses me to no end. :-)

Eiji's family name, 'Amane,' seems to work out to something along the lines of 'the price of linen' -- from 'ama' (linen/flax/hemp) + 'ne' (price/cost) -- which is equally amusing, and probably equally off-base, linguistically speaking. But you know something? I don't care -- it's a good name for a businessman, so I'm happy. I can't remember exactly where I stole the name from, offhand, but I do know I didn't pull that one out of thin air. It's funny that it turned out to be appropriate anyway.

Where was I...

Oh, yes. The original point of this was that I needed to name a minor character who became unexpectedly relevant to my plot outline -- Kafunnokaze's jounin-sensei (and if that's not a plot hint I don't know what is) -- and I wanted family names for two secondary characters associated with Eiji: Takeshi, one of his ship captains, and Rika, the harbormaster. (Harbor-mistress, really, but whatever.) And that is now done. *beams*