How do attendance checklists in Japan deal with multiple possible name readings?


Even though there are several recurring, easily guessable family name readings
([田中]{たなか｝、佐藤｛さとう｝、田村｛たむら｝) in Japanese, there are usually many possible
readings to people's names Kanji, especially first names (良 could be あきら, りょう,
まこと etc).

How do attendance checks in school classes deal with this one issue? Are
students' names written in Kanji only, so that teachers have to ask the
students with unusual/obscure names on how to pronounce them?




First, even native Japanese adults can correctly guess the reading of the
kanji names of, say, only 90% of students, at most. Quite a few people have
names (either first names or surnames) with really unpredictable readings.

> How do attendance checks in school classes deal with this one issue? Are
> students' names written in Kanji only?

The answer is 'yes, mostly', because a class is a small and stable community
(40 people at most) and everyone learns how to call one another fairly
quickly. There is no true need to disambiguate the reading in such a
situation, in the first place. Here's how a typical checklist used in an
elementary school looks like
([source](https://www.laphouse.com/txsk_gmn07.htm)):

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AMMkl.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AMMkl.png)

There may be a few people with really difficult or ambiguous kanji readings,
but that does not justify you always have to have hiragana alongside the kanji
names throughout the school year.

But what about the beginning of each school year, when people are yet to
familiarize themselves with one another? In such a case we can always use a
name list with hiragana readings, which looks something like this
([source](http://neta.co.jp/koumusiennsisutemu/ka04.html)):

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JwGnW.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JwGnW.png)

As @Urukann pointed out, virtually all organizations (schools and companies)
maintain a digital list of members with a furigana ("readings") field/column.
Without the furigana field, it is even impossible to sort names
alphabetically! Basically whenever kanji names need to be correctly read out
aloud or sorted, we need furigana (hiragana). Unfortunately, many foreign
contact book applications and such are ignorant of this fact and try to sort
Japanese names based on their kanji character code, which is nearly
meaningless.

Most of the time, teachers do not have to ask how to read the name of a
student, because they usually have access to the list with readings. But
sometimes teachers may have to ask the reading of a name directly to the
students themselves, as shown in @WataruSubridge's answer. This is more true
in higher educations where teachers can meet many random students.




It's like this:

Teacher: 「野田{のだ} 努{つとむ}さん。」

野田: 「はい。」

T: 「いわい 隆{たかし}さんですかね？しゅくさんですか？」(the surname reads 祝)

祝: 「はふりです。」

T: 「はふりって読むんですか。珍しい名前ですね。はふり たかしさん。」

祝: 「はい。」

This conversation has actually taken place in my twelfth grade first
classroom.

Note: People with easy-to-read names don't end up in this kind of awkward
conversation very often.

Still, it's often the case with me that they misread my name, especially when
I hear back from business entities via a phone call, even after I filled in
all the items including カナ on the inquiry forms like the picture below. They
often overlook カナ when they find the names in kanji easy to read. I feel
really awkward making a correction every time they mess up my name.

When you misread someone's name, do apologize.

