I noticed her name was all in kanji, and, reading the furigana on top, I looked up all the parts. My question is, when reading someone’s name, how are you supposed to know how to pronounce it? Do you just furigana your name all the time? I was able to find all the parts of her name on Jisho, except 口（ぐち）(though, just now it was the 3rd choice on my kanji converter…

My apologies if it’s just a noob question that’s answered later on (still haven’t found the time to finish season 2) but I just couldn’t come to my own conclusion. I figured once you know a lot of names/kanji, you can just make really good guesses on names?

Koichiからのメール：　For names — names have their own pronunciations a lot of times, and they even have their own dictionaries :( But, if you think about it, it’s no different from many other cultures. Most names don’t really mean anything or really relate to much of anything. Sure, they have (old) meanings, but most of the time you have to look up those meanings because you don’t know what they are. Kanji in names just have weird pronunciations, and over time you’ll learn them, especially the common ones. Sorry to not be much help there, but yeah… names can be troublesome… :(

also, there aren’t any new AKB members. if there was, I would have known about it. the latest promoted member (from what I remember) is フレッシュレモン

Thanks for the info, but that brings up another question: How do kanji names work, exactly? Is there some way to turn, for example, Mars (マルス, stylized as マルゾ) into a kanji name? That’d be pretty cool. But yea, thought I’d ask because I have no clue how or why kanji names even exist.

i.e.) If I tell you my name is Japanese, it won’t be clear which Kanji I use for my name.

or If you see my name written in Kanji, it won’t always be clear how to pronounce it.

There are MANY common names which most Japanese people know how to read when they see it. There are, of course, always exceptions. Some names have more than one reading and the normal reading is not always the one used for people’s names.

Kanji – (Normal Reading) – Actual Name
東雲 – （とううん） – しののめ
東海林 – (とうかいりん） – しょうじ
九十九 -（きゅうくうきゅう）- つくも
(these can be seen as family names in Japan)

当て字 – is more when parents choose a completely unrelated reading for their kid’s first name. In recent years, new parents have been adopting a trend of choosing kanji based on style, stroke count or meaning and associating readings or pronunciations which would not commonly be associated to said kanji.This makes it nearly impossible to know how to say one’s name simply from looking at the kanji and requires furigana or someone to tell you.

The only example I can come up with right now would be
月 – (つき) – ライト (yes, I know this is from Death Note, but it meant to serve as an example of what I am talking about)