Quote:
Originally Posted by YoshimiTheEthereal
I have a few of questions I am curious about.
1.) Do people in Japan have middle names?
2.) How are nicknames created?
3.) What does "kichi" mean added onto a name? Like if someone is named "Teru" and he is called "Terukichi"?
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1) Nope. Ignore those who tell you otherwise.
2) In many ways.
A. Take one part of a person's either first or last name.
B. Add "chan" or "kun" to A.
C. Add a random sound to A, such as "pii", "chin", "ppe", "maru", etc.
D. Kids like to create nicknames from others' physical characteristics (fat, skinny, tall, curly hair, red hair, etc). Teachers try to stop this in school but they do it anyway.
There are many other ways. One of my classmates back in high school was nicknamed "Denver" just because she liked John Denver. Another one (a boy) was nicknamed "Umeji" completely out of the blue.
3) This is hard to explain because, as a non-native speaker, you wouldn't know how "kichi" sounded to the Japanese ear. The original "kichi" is the kanji 吉, meaning "good" or "good luck" and it was part of many masculine names a long time ago.
Now, very few boys are named with that character. But people still like the sound very much, so they sometimes create nicknames by adding "kichi" to a part of a first name. I say "a part of it" because it ends up too long a name if you add "kichi" to someon'e full first name which usually has 3-4 syllables already.