AboutDreams Expertise I have been teaching myself the language for the past seven years, having consistent practice with Japanese materials. I can help translate things from English to Japanese or vice versa. I can also help you get started if you're planning on taking up the language. =) I'm most familiar with things like anime, manga, J-pop, games and so on.
Experience I began learning the language in 1999. I frequently talk with penpals and natives in Japan, as well as continually keep up practicing with authentic Japanese materials.
Question Alot of popular animes use Japanese names such as bleach. Zabimaru is the name of a weapon in bleach which they say means baboon king. In all Japanese to English and vice versa dictionaries ive found it says there is no such word. Are there any sites where i can find names like this in Japanese?
Answer Hello,
Most names for anime characters, moves, weapons, etc, are formed from a combination of kanji. The same rule is also true for real Japanese names or place names - more than one kanji symbol will be combined, and together, will give the name its meaning.
狒 (hi) means "baboon" (doubled for proper pronounciation in this case - 狒狒 (hihi))
王 (ou) means "king"
蛇 (za) means "serpent"
尾 (bi) means "tail"
丸 (maru) means "curling" (more than likely, in this case)
So altogether, we have the "Curling Serpent Tail of the Baboon King".
Unfortunately, there is no place you can simply plug in names like this and get an answer. If you're able to find the kanji for it like I did, you can always enter them all into this kanji dictionary (http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1B) and find out what each symbol means.
There are many things that might pose a problem, however. Sometimes, two or three kanji may form a common word - for this, you'd have to check a standard Japanese-English dictionary. Other times, names/titles may be written in kana (looks like this -> ひらがな・カタカナ）- kana symbols have no indivdual meaning like kanji does, so the kana could be representing many different words, and it's hard to get an exact meaning.
And bear in mind that with anime names, the bulk of them are just made-up and don't reflect any real name or word - they're just a bunch of kanji put together to either sound cool or give the name a cool meaning.
