Until the 1990’s many Japanese people named their children by including one kanji character from their own names, or something relevant to the baby’s sibling, or something that reflected the trends of the time. Since kanji have a meaning, people could guess the generation a person was born into and their gender just by looking at a name. However, these days there is a tendency to place more importance on the way a name sounds rather than its meaning. Even Japanese people can hardly read names correctly due to unnatural kanji used only for phonetic purposes. Furthermore, the number of so called “kira kira (flashy) names,” such as stage names has also increased.