In this section you can learn how to write the Japanese Kanji names of the characters in Detective Conan and about the Japanese alphabets and so on!


1) Meitantei Conan - Famous Detective Conan

Description: The above Kanji is the Japanese name of "Detective Conan". The first three very complicated characters are kanji (Chinese characters) which means "Great Detective", and the last three characters with less strokes is katakana (this alphabet is only used in foreign names, i.e. words taken from another language) which is apparently the name "Conan".

Before going further, you must learn that Japanese have totally three different alphabets, I've already named two of them: the first one is Kanji characters which is characters taken from Chinese, there are thousands of Kanji characters and they seem to be complicated to write (lol...not for me ^_^), it is not easy for foreign speakers to learn all the Kanji characters.
The second one is the Katakana alphabet which consists of about 100 alphabets, and this alphabet is mainly used to write foreign words and to translate foreign names.
The last one is Hiragana, which is used for normal writing. Hiragana also consists of about 100 characters. Both Hiragana and Katakana tells you the pronunciation whilst Kanji doesn't, that's why sometimes you'll see small Hiragana alphabets above Kanji characters to tell you how to pronounce those words. If you begin to learn Hiragana and Katakana, you'll notice that these two alphabets are fairly similar.
Before, Kanji was used by men and Hiragana was used by women, and nowadays, the Japanese language consists of a mix of Kanji and Hiragana.
There is also something called Romanji writing, and this is to use the Roman alphabet to write Japanese. The Romanji tells the foreign speakers how the words pronounce, e.g. "Meitantei".



2) The Kanji names of the characters:

a. Kudo Shinichi



Description: Here above is the Kanji name of "Kudo Shinichi". Notice that the Japanese usually uses the traditional Kanji characters for names, they use Kanji for both family names and their first names (sometimes Hiragana might be used for first names). Also notice that the Japanese writes their family names before their first names, in this case, the first two character is "Kudo" and the last two is "Shinichi".


b. Edogawa Conan



Description: The name "Edogawa Conan" is a bit different from other Japanese names. Since "Conan" is taken from the detective writer Conan Doyle, so Katakana is used, and there is no Kanji for that name. "Edogawa" is a Japanese family name, the first three character is the Kanji Edogawa and the last three is Katakana Konan.


c. Mouri Ran



Description: This time I've written the Hiragana alphabets above the Kanji name of "Mouri Ran" to indicate the pronunciation. The first two character is "Mouri" and the last is "Ran", Ran in Japanese means orchid, flowers with unusual shapes and brilliant colours, it is a common Japanese girl name.

In some instances, people cannot guess a person's Kanji name by just knowing their pronunciation, because some names may have more than one Kanji name. For example, the name "Eri" has many different Kanji names that all have the same pronunciation.