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>According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully comple

>According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully complete, since Akiko can also use that character. I think the "ko" suffix comes from the second Kanji character "子" which means child (I think, it has been over a decade since i studied Japanese but that particular Kanji character looks familiar to me). So I believe it is similar to how a lot of English surnames end in "son" (Johnson, Anderson, Harrison) etc.

thaumasiotes 8y ago
You're right that 子 means child. But there is no similarity to English (or any language) patronymics. 子 was used as an element of girls' names because it's good for a girl to be youthful. "Johnson" lets you know that the person is the son of John, not that the person is himself named John.
- bigger_cheese 8y ago
  Ahh that makes sense thanks for confirming. I studied Japanese in Primary school until grade 10. We had only just started on Kanji when I stopped taking the classes. I was surprised I could still read all the hiragana and katakana in the source article I guess I retained more of it than I thought.
rococode 8y ago
Oh yeah definitely! I never noticed the similarity with -son, that's really interesting. I was actually specifically referring to the "Aki" part of Akiko which isn't listed in the dictionary I'm using. Now that I think about it though, I've never seen that read as Akiko before (or Akiko written that way). I don't see it on any websites and Microsoft IME doesn't list that as a version of Akiko at all (~10 pages of suggestions). Makes me curious about where the author got that reading from...
- fenomas 8y ago
  It doesn't mean much for a particular kanji/reading to not appear in your IME - there are just too many combinations, and sometimes a given reading will only be common in certain areas or even families. Plus people sometimes just make up new ones :) With that said, here's a site showing the "akiko" reading: https://name.sijisuru.com/Pname/pdetail?pname=%E6%B7%B3%E5%AD%90 https://name.sijisuru.com/Pname/pdetail?pname=%E6%B7%B3%E5%A... (Searching by reading, the same site lists 291 different ways to write "akiko". Yipes.)

thaumasiotes 8y ago

You're right that 子 means child. But there is no similarity to English (or any language) patronymics. 子 was used as an element of girls' names because it's good for a girl to be youthful. "Johnson" lets you know that the person is the son of John, not that the person is himself named John.

bigger_cheese 8y ago
Ahh that makes sense thanks for confirming. I studied Japanese in Primary school until grade 10. We had only just started on Kanji when I stopped taking the classes. I was surprised I could still read all the hiragana and katakana in the source article I guess I retained more of it than I thought.

rococode 8y ago

Oh yeah definitely! I never noticed the similarity with -son, that's really interesting. I was actually specifically referring to the "Aki" part of Akiko which isn't listed in the dictionary I'm using. Now that I think about it though, I've never seen that read as Akiko before (or Akiko written that way). I don't see it on any websites and Microsoft IME doesn't list that as a version of Akiko at all (~10 pages of suggestions). Makes me curious about where the author got that reading from...

fenomas 8y ago
It doesn't mean much for a particular kanji/reading to not appear in your IME - there are just too many combinations, and sometimes a given reading will only be common in certain areas or even families. Plus people sometimes just make up new ones :) With that said, here's a site showing the "akiko" reading: https://name.sijisuru.com/Pname/pdetail?pname=%E6%B7%B3%E5%AD%90 https://name.sijisuru.com/Pname/pdetail?pname=%E6%B7%B3%E5%A... (Searching by reading, the same site lists 291 different ways to write "akiko". Yipes.)