If you need a Nara-period name for a commoner and you don’t want to read through the pages upon pages of delicious scholarship I’ve amassed here, this is the quick and dirty way to do it:
1. Clan Name
“Clan” is a rough term that’s best understood as a group of people, mostly but not always related by blood, who hold power, perform a service, or are bound together by some other function. For example, some Nara-period clans were ruling families and their hangers-on. Others were, say, professional scribes, weavers, hunters, blacksmiths, or just about any other profession you can think of. Still others were families who immigrated from China or Korea. It’s unclear how large individual clans were, or how tightly bound their members were. However, it’s unlikely that every member of an occupational clan followed that occupation, so if you like a name but don’t want to tie yourself to the name’s literal meaning, you have some leeway.
Clan names passed from father to child. Women kept their original clan names when they married, although there was no restriction on marrying within the clan, so there are plenty of couples in the records with the same clan name.
Until the 750’s, not every commoner had a clan name. The government eventually required everyone to choose a clan name in order to make it easier to track individuals.
The clan name is followed by the possessive particle no. For example, Sakamaro of the Mutobe clan was called Mutobe no Sakamaro.
Go to the list of Nara-period clan names >
2. Personal Name
Each person had a single personal name. In later centuries, men (but not women) changed their names to reflect their social status, but there is no direct evidence of this among commoners in the Nara period.
Men’s names were constructed of an element that conveyed meaning, either standing alone (Saru 猴, “monkey”; Piro 広 “broad, wide, spacious”) or combined with a name ending (Sarute 猴毛 “monkey + hand”; Pirota 広田 “broad + field”; Piromaro 広麻呂 “broad + -maro”). Although name endings have meanings, it’s best to think of them as fashionable sounds, the same way we create new baby names ending in -den (Braden, Jaden, Zaden) without taking into account that -den means “hill” or “valley.”
Women’s names were constructed like men’s names, except that all female names ended in -me, “female.” (Although -me was sometimes written with the character for “female” 女, it was commonly written phonetically with the character for “sold” 売.) For example, the female version of Saru was Sarume 猴売, and the feminine of Piro was Pirome 広売. Women could also use most of the same name endings as men, followed by -me. The feminine of Pirota was Pirotame 広田売.