Most Popular Baby Girl Names in Japan 2024 and Their Meanings (Meiji Yasuda)

The top girl's name in Meiji Yasuda's ranking of babies born in Japan in 2024 was 紬. Read Tsumugi (つむぎ), it was given to 39 babies in the survey. In second place came 翠 (Sui) with 32 babies, and in third 凛 (Rin) with 29.

One important caveat before the figures: Japan does not publish an official national list of baby names. Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance's (明治安田生命) list is the one most often quoted in the country, but it is a private company's survey of babies born into its own policyholder families, not official statistics. So 39 does not mean "39 babies in Japan"; it means 39 babies in the survey sample. The company has not published the 2024 sample size, so we give no percentages and no estimate for the country as a whole.

Three layers of a Japanese name: spelling, reading, Arabic letters

The meaning of a Japanese name lives largely in its kanji, that is, in how it is written. The reading is a separate layer: the same kanji can be read in different ways, and the same reading can be written with many different kanji. Meiji Yasuda's main list ranks spellings; its ranking by reading is a separate list. For us there is a third layer: Arabic letters. Japanese names have no established Arabic orthography, so the Arabic spelling in our table is a transliteration of the sound of the reading, and the Abjad value is calculated from that spelling. The result is simple but important: the kanji carries the meaning, the sound decides the Abjad value.

The top 30 girl names of 2024

Because of ties, the top 30 here means 35 names: nine names share 19th place and seven share 29th. Meanings are given kanji by kanji. The Meiji Yasuda list does not give readings; where a row is marked with an asterisk (*), the reading is a likely reading, and the spelling may also be read differently.

* Likely reading. The Abjad value was calculated for this reading; if the name is read differently, its Arabic spelling and value change too.

What changed from 2023 to 2024?

First, a reminder about the small sample: the nine names in 19th place have 16 babies each, the seven in 29th place 14 each. A difference of one or two babies can move a name several places. So read the movements below as the picture this survey shows, not as a firm trend. Because the sample sizes of earlier years were not published, the counts cannot be compared directly from year to year; the rank is what matters.

• 紬 (Tsumugi) is back on top. In 2023 it was 3rd with 36 babies. In our 2021–2024 data it was also first in 2021, then fell as far as 30th in 2022.
• 翠 (Sui) climbs every year. 37th in 2021, 18th in 2022, 9th in 2023, 2nd in 2024. The number of babies given the name in the survey rose from 22 to 32.
• 陽葵 (Himari) gave up the top spot. The number one name of 2022 and 2023 is 4th in 2024; the number of babies given the name fell from 41 to 28.
• 凛 (Rin) does not budge. In the top three every year from 2021 to 2024.
• Big jumps: 葵 (Aoi) rose from 50th to 6th. Two spellings read Koharu rose together: 心陽 from 26th to 7th and 心晴 from 26th to 9th.
• Fallers: 結菜 (Yuina) fell from 5th to 29th, 結月 (Yuzuki) from 9th to 28th, 澪 (Mio) from 5th to 16th.
• In and out of the top 30: 11 of the 35 names were not in the 2023 top 30. One of them, ひかり (Hikari), written in hiragana, did not appear in any of our 2021–2023 lists. Meanwhile 心春 (5th), 彩葉 (9th) and 愛 (9th), all near the top in 2023, left the top 30 this year.

Same sound, different kanji: what does Abjad see?

The most instructive feature of the list is that the same reading appears more than once with different spellings. In the five pairs below the meaning changes, but the Arabic transliteration, and therefore the Abjad value, does not change at all:

The reverse is also true: different sounds can meet at the same number. Mei (ماي) and An (آن) meet at 51, Aoi (أوي) and Yua (يوا) at 17, Hana (هانا) and Noa (نوا) at 57. Different kanji, different sound, same number.

The building blocks of the list

結 (to tie) appears in four of the 35 names: 結愛, 結, 結月 and 結菜. 凪 (windless calm), 咲 (to bloom), 陽 (sunshine) and 菜 (greens) each appear in three. Japanese names build their meaning from these blocks; Abjad reads not the blocks but the sound of the name.

The 2024 list through the lens of Abjad

We calculated the values with our site's convention: the letters of the Arabic transliteration are counted as written, a shadda is not counted twice, and an alif carrying hamza counts as 1.

• First letters of the top 10: By the classical classification, four names begin with a Fire letter (陽葵 and 陽菜 with hā ه, 芽依 with mīm م, 葵 with alif أ), three with a Water letter (翠 with sīn س, 心陽 and 心晴 with kāf ك), two with an Air letter (紬 with tā ت, 結愛 with yā ي) and one with an Earth letter (凛 with rā ر). Note that some authors classify the letter elements differently.
• Highest and lowest: 紬 and 紬希 (Tsumugi, تسوموغي) lead with 1522; 1000 of that comes from ghayn (غ) and 400 from tā (ت). Nagisa (ناغيسا) at 1122 and Nagi (ناغي) at 1061 owe their high values to the same غ. The lowest value is 17 (Aoi and Yua), followed by Yui (يوي) at 26.
• Change the spelling, change the value: Rin is 260 written رين, with the long vowel shown, and 250 written رن. Hana is 57 as هانا and 56 as هنا.

No transliteration is "luckier" than another. But because the value depends so much on reading and spelling, our paid reports always begin by settling the exact reading and spelling of the baby's and the parents' names. And a name's value on its own is not an analysis: the real question is how that value forms a whole with the mother's and father's names, and where it falls in the baby's star chart (yıldızname) together with the mother's name.

Arabic-origin or Qur'anic names on the list?

No: all the names on this list are of Japanese origin, and none is of Arabic origin or appears in the Qur'an. One detail is still worth noting: short names such as Mio, Rio, Hana and Sana are easy to say in many languages, Arabic included. When such a name is chosen, the Abjad calculation follows not the kanji but how the family reads the name and writes it in Arabic letters.

Final word

Meiji Yasuda's 2024 list comes from a small sample but paints an interesting picture: 紬 returned to the top, 翠 has risen every year since 2021, and two spellings read Koharu moved up together. In Japanese names the kanji carries the meaning and the sound carries the Abjad value; whether a name suits your family is decided not by its rank but by its meaning and its relationship with the parents' names. Meiji Yasuda has also published its 2025 results; this article focuses on the 2024 list.

Source: Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance (明治安田生命), Name Ranking 2024 (名前ランキング) — the company's annual survey of babies born in 2024 into its policyholder families; it is not an official count representing Japan as a whole. Kanji meanings: EDRDG KANJIDIC2 (CC BY-SA).

Note: This article is for information only. Abjad and letter elements are a traditional interpretive framework; no claim is made that a name determines anything definite about a person's life.