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In Death Note when Light introduces himself to Naomi Misora, he gives his full
name and tells her how to spell it in Japanese. When she gives her name, she
also tells him how to spell it.

The audience knows he is doing this because

> Light Yagami is Kira and needs to know how to spell her name correctly so he
> can kill her with the Death Note.

In English names like Steven (Stephen) Jon (John) and Robert (Bob) have
multiple spellings. Sometimes people will say stuff like "I'm Steven with a
ph" when introducing themselves, but the only time your spell out your name is
when someone needs to look it up in a list or registry like a restaurant
reservation.

**When introducing yourself in Japan is it normal to also tell people how to
spell your name?**

P.S. A few characters spelled their name in High-Rise Invasion as well.


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2022-03-13T22:01:56.277
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question
death-note culture japan
Is it common to tell people how you spell your name in Japan?


Telling someone how to spell your name is probably pretty common in Japan,
especially if your name has an uncommon spelling. Even just from watching
anime, you see it happen pretty often. For instance, new students often write
their name on the board (or the teacher does it for them), or during an
introduction a character will say, "It's spelled with the Kanji for this and
that." This prevalence in media leads me to believe it's a normal thing that
happens.

If you know anything about Kanji, you know that you can't really tell how to
pronounce a person's name just from reading the Kanji (of which there are
thousands in common use, and even more than that not in common use). That's
because Kanji have different readings, and there are even special readings for
names. The reverse is also true. Just from the pronunciation, you can't
necessarily tell how to spell it in Kanji, because multiple Kanji could be
used. Unless you're using a pretty common spelling, you'd need to tell
everyone that information.

In addition to just telling people, it seems business cards might also serve
the purpose of conveying spelling and pronunciation. As per this [article on
Tofugu](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/jikoshoukai/), the Japanese sometimes
even carry around personal cards:

> Business cards in Japan are called meishi 名刺, and are an important part of
> Japanese culture. Even outside of the business world, Japanese people
> sometimes have personal meishi made (meishi means "name card" after all).

In contrast, if the name is spelled in Katakana or Hiragana, you would likely
know exactly how to spell/pronounce it just from hearing/reading it. That's
because these two sets of symbols are a phonetic syllabary, as compared to the
English language which has multiple pronunciations for the same letters.

Additional reading:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_name#Difficulty_of_reading_names>

<https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/your-name-in-japanese/>

<https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/jikoshoukai/>

<https://www.quora.com/Why-in-Japanese-culture-whenever-two-new-people-meet-
they-exchange-their-names-spelling-in-written-Is-it-just-a-tradition-or-are-
there-a-lot-of-ways-to-write-ones-name-in-Japanese>


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answer