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Reference Materials

We use many resources to verify our information. Here is a short list of our sources so that you can independently verify our information for yourself. We hope to earn your trust and confidence with the information we have on this website and to this end we want to provide you with enough information so you can verify things for yourself if you would like.

On-line Dictionaries:

Jeffrey's Japanese<->English Dictionary (English) - An on-line Japanese/English Dictionary. We commonly reference this dictionary though caution should be used as it is sometimes ambiguous and unless one knows Japanese well, mistakes are easy to make. It is very useful for verifying translations.

Goo Jiten Japanese <-> English Dictionary (Japanese) - This is a more thorough dictionary than Jeffrey's though it is in Japanese.

Merriam-Webster Online - This is very useful because English words can have several meanings. We use this dictionary when there is doubt about which meaning is being translated.

Wikipedia (English) - Many Japanese concepts, arts, and martial arts have Wikipedia entries that show the Japanese kanji used. As a quick example, searching Wikipedia for Samurai shows the kanji used and it is the same as what we use in our Stockanji Samurai.

Etymology of Names:

BabyNamer - Produced by Oxygen Media this is, in our opinion, the best source for the meaning of names. A great new feature is you can hear the pronunciation of most of the names in their catalog. Though these pronunciation center on the American English version of the name.

The Etymology of First Names - This is our second most respected site for the meaning of names. A great feature of this site is they give the phonetic pronunciation of the name including international pronunciations.

Name Translations:

Goo Eiga (Japanese) - This is a very well maintained list of celebrity names associated with the movie industry. For example type in Jennifer and it lists the first five names but if you click on the link to show all then you get a list of every Jennifer in the industry - some 94 entries. What this means is that if you are concerned about our translation you can use this to make sure that one source in the industry translates the name the same way.

There is one word of caution though and that is Goo Eiga does not give the pronunciation they use. Names can be pronounced in a variety of ways and they will often favor the pronunciation from where the name originated and not the American English pronunciation of the name. This is a major reason why in our translation we give the pronunciation of the name we are translating.

Foreign Movie Star Magazine - This is our second favorite site for checking how names are being translated in the industry. Most of the time the translations match that of Goo Eiga when the same name is listed which is what one would expect.

Wikipedia (Japanese) - This is useful for finding the translation of famous names that are not movie or recording stars.

Japan Listen - This is actually a commercial audio CD site. We don't use this often for research because it is a commercial site that sells CDs. Though we do refer to it in a pinch - they have translations of recording artist's names in both katakana and hiragana.

Other:

Kanji & Kana : A Handbook of the Japanese Writing System by Wolfgang Hadamitzky and Mark Spahn This is an excellent reference and is perfect for learning the stroke order of kana and kanji.

The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary by John H. Haig, Andrew N. Nelson For more advanced needs this is the Japanese-English kanji dictionary.

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