Names and People
Kristina Troost, PhD
Course: Research Methods in Japanese Studies, 2005 Spring,
Duke University
Includes information on:
- Reading Japanese Names
- Who's Who
- Organizational and other Directories
- Genealogies
- Biographical Indexes
- Bibliographies of Biographies
- Biographical Series
Provides information in Japanese on living and deceased people in economics, politics, society (190,000 people); researchers, authors, journalists (150,000); the arts, entertainment and sports (100,000). Brief records include reading of name, employment/occupation, and source of data. Detailed records also include birth/death dates, birthplace, field of specialization, educational history, history of employment, prizes, address as well as sources of information on the individual and a list of materials written by the individual. While the database focuses on people whose notable activities occurred after 1868, it also includes 4000 historical figures from before the Meiji era.
A good place to find readings of names and what someone has published.
Good for finding the readings of names of both people and publishers.
The opac often has the readings of names and occasionally publishers. It has an authority file to link commonly used names with the official name. Not available in the afternoons.
Article on Reading Names
Butler, Lee. "Language Change and 'Proper' Transliterations in Premodern Japanese."
Japanese Language and Literature: Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 36:1 (April 2002), pp. 27-44. Includes a discussion of the main problems and includes some interesting examples of "correct" readings--for example, evidence strongly suggests that Oda
Nobunaga's name was originally (and probably during his life) Ota rather than Oda.
