Talk:Hiragana and katakana place names

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In written Japanese?[edit]

The list of kana cities should be turned into a table showing their respective names in kana and kanji (wherever known). - 60.50.251.214 (talk) 10:35, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Where do the Kanji names come from?[edit]

In the lead section it says the cities "have names which are written in hiragana only." Yet in the list there are Kanji versions as well. Perhaps someone could write something about where those versions come from?--ospalh (talk) 08:56, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, it makes no sense. 86.174.47.33 (talk) 13:08, 22 May 2010 (UTC).[reply]

About half of the place name kanji on the list are rare characters not found in the Joyo kanji (or "regular use" kanji). When the Japanese government introduced these characters, a lot of kanji stopped being "official" and were dropped from newspapers, babies' names, etc. Presumably these cities chose to write their names in hiragana rather than writing it with an "unofficial" character (or worse, with a kanji with the same pronunciation but the "wrong" meaning). I have no proof of this, but I'm sure someone will be able to find a reference to back it up. Of course, there might be exceptions, and it only applies to half of the list. — GypsyJiver (drop me a line) 11:52, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think the article has been rejigged since I was last here, but there are still remaining problems. In the "List of fully-Hiragana cities and towns", the explanation of why, in a supposedly "fully-Hiragana" list there is a kanji column at all somehow needs to be reinforced. Are these so-called "fully-Hiragana" names the places mentioned in the intro that "have kanji, but are usually written in hiragana only"? 86.181.204.175 (talk) 01:59, 10 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the Kanji names of these "Hiragana cities" are Manyogana phonetical usages. For example, Akiruno, Tokyo (あきる野市) is written as 阿伎留野 - 阿伎留野 has no specific semantic meaning; the characters are used phonetically - a-ki-ru-no. This practice of using Kanji phonetically can be found elsewhere as well; for example, France (フランス, furansu) was traditionally written as 佛蘭西 (furansu; Shinjitai: 仏蘭西), and within a (humourous) Japanese TV commercial advertising Fanta (the softdrink), they used 吐露非狩古鬱 (= トロピカルフルーツ = toropikarufuruutsu = "tropical fruits"). In addition, many traditionally Ainu areas in Hokkaido have their location names in the Ainu language, and have equivalent phonetical kanji renderings with no specific semantic meaning. For the cities within the list that aren't using phonetically-chosen Kanji, it would be the case that a kanji name was traditionally used but fell out of place due to a character being uncommon/not in the Joyo Kanji list, or that they used a particularly odd kanji reading. -- 李博杰 | —Talk contribs email 12:39, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why?[edit]

WHY are cities eliminating the kanji to their names? I think it's important to know, whether it be to make it easier to read/write for children, the kanji are not general use kanji, or just because "it's our language, and we Japanese feel it should be done that way."113.34.33.154 (talk) 07:54, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Point out which kanji are manyōgana and which are obsolete[edit]

I think it would be an improvement to further explore the "Many hiragana city names have kanji equivalents that are either phonetic manyōgana, or whose kanji are now obsolete" statement by adding a column to the table pointing which kanji are a manyougana and which are obsolete now. --ᛒᚨᛊᛖ (ᛏᚨᛚᚲ) 21:25, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]