Can I choose my own kanji characters for my middle name?


My middle name is Asano, named after my great grandmother, but my family has
lost the ability to write Japanese and not sure exactly what kanji she used in
her name. Am I able to decide my own characters for Asano, like 朝野? The same
goes for my little brother whose middle name is Kenjirō. Is it okay to use the
characters 健次郎?

Thank you!




It depends on what you're trying to do.

Prescriptively speaking, the kanji of a person's name is fixed in one way. It
is not allowed to be changed freely. If your ancestor's name was actually 麻乃
but you used 朝野, that is "wrong" in principle. If you are compiling an
official history of your lineage, you should never assign arbitrary kanji to
her name. You should do your research.

However, if you simply want to casually assign some kanji for fun, then no one
is going to stop you from doing so. I can assure you that both 朝野 and 健次郎 are
reasonable and natural choices. But there are many other possible kanji
combinations that can be used for Asano and Kenjiro, so the chance that they
are _actually_ correct would be less than 50%.

