Teaching a Child to Write Their Own Name in Japanese Kana

In 1967, Japan’s National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics studied how well more than 2,000 kindergarten children aged four and five could read and write hiragana. The summary of the report (in Japanese) sorts children into stages by how many characters they could read. One of the earliest stages is described as having begun to learn the characters in their own name.

For a young child, the characters of their own name mean something before any other characters in the kana chart do. This post is for parents whose children are learning Japanese: Japanese families living abroad, and families whose children learn Japanese as a second language. It covers why the name is a good place to start writing, and how to go about it.

Hiragana or katakana?

First, which script. Japanese given names are usually written in kanji, and children write them in hiragana until they learn the kanji: ゆうた, さくら. Names from other languages are written in katakana: エマ for Emma, ノア for Noah.

So a child with a Japanese name usually starts with hiragana, and a child with a non-Japanese name with katakana. Some families teach both. I think it is fine to start with whichever one the child will see written on their own things. For the rest of the hiragana, a suggested order is in What Order to Teach Hiragana In.

Why start with the name

There are a few ways to decide which kana to teach first, such as starting with the characters that have the fewest strokes. I think the characters of the child’s name can sit outside any such order, for two reasons. They are the characters a child most wants to write, and they are the characters a child sees every day: on a lunch bag, a shoe rack, a drawing on the fridge. For a child growing up outside Japan, where Japanese writing is rare in daily life, that second reason matters even more.

Japanese schools teach hiragana from the beginning in the first grade, according to the national curriculum guidelines, so there is no rush. Being able to write their own name simply gives a child a small sense of pride.

When the name has a hard character

Some names include characters that are hard for small hands: ゆ, ぬ, ね, む, あ and め in hiragana, which loop or knot, or ヌ and ヲ in katakana.

Don’t drill one character on its own. If the name has ゆ, it is tempting to make the child write ゆ over and over. I think it works better to write the whole name, practise only the character that isn’t working, and then go back to the whole name. Inside the name, the child knows why they are writing it.

Start big. Loops and knots get harder the smaller you write. Tracing a large model with a finger first, then writing with a pencil, helps the hand learn the movement. What tracing does well, and when to move on, is in What Tracing Practice Does.

Mirror writing is normal. Young children often write characters such as し, く and つ facing the wrong way. I would put the model next to theirs and point out the direction once, rather than correcting it sharply.

Small characters and the long vowel mark. Names such as しょうた, りょう or いっせい need small characters, ょ and っ. Katakana names often need them too, along with the long vowel mark ー: ジョン for John, ルーシー for Lucy. In horizontal writing, the small character sits low and to the left in its square; in vertical writing, high and to the right. The ー follows the direction of the text, a horizontal line in horizontal writing and a vertical one in vertical writing. Names with dakuten, such as だいき or ジョン, are covered in How to Write Dakuten and Handakuten.

Using real chances to write the name

There are plenty of reasons to write a name at home.

• On their things. A notebook cover, a lunch box label, a drawing. The child doesn’t have to label everything, but one or two things can be theirs to write.
• On drawings. Make it a habit to write the name in the corner of each drawing. If an adult adds the date, you also keep a record of how the name changes over the months.
• On letters and cards. A card for grandparents in Japan, signed by the child in kana. Writing that someone will read feels different to a child.

These are not practice sessions. They are moments when the name needs to be written, and I think that is the most natural way for name practice to build up.

After the name

Once the name is steady, I would move on to family members’ names, friends’ names and favourite things. A child who knows the characters of their name starts finding the same characters in other words. Noticing “that’s from my name” is often the way into the rest of the chart.

After that, fill in the remaining characters a few at a time. Characters whose stroke order often goes wrong are in Hiragana Stroke Order: The Characters Learners Most Often Get Wrong, and characters that look alike are in Hiragana That Look Alike.

Practising name characters in StudyX Japanese Letters Tracer

StudyX Japanese Letters Tracer is an iPhone and iPad app for practising the stroke order of hiragana and katakana. When you choose a character, the model line grows one stroke at a time in the correct order. Write one stroke with your finger or a stylus and lift it, and the next stroke of the model appears. There is no scoring or right-or-wrong judgement.

To practise just the characters of a name, tap the first character in the chart. When you finish, close the screen with the × at the top left and tap the next one. For ゆうた, that means ゆ, う and た in turn. The chart shows the basic hiragana. For a katakana or dakuten character, open the basic hiragana in the same position and switch with the buttons at the top of the screen: open は to get バ or パ, or open た to get だ.

The model can be shown large, medium or small, so a hard character can start large and get smaller as the child gains confidence. A cross guide shows where the middle of the square is. A speaker button plays the reading of the character, which helps children who are still connecting the sounds with the shapes.

It covers 142 characters: hiragana and katakana with their dakuten and handakuten forms. Combined sounds such as きゃ, small characters such as ょ and っ, and the long vowel mark ー are not included, so if a name needs them, practise those parts on paper. It is a one-time purchase with no ads and no in-app purchases. On iPhone it runs in landscape.

For a first session, see Getting Started with StudyX Japanese Letters Tracer.