Japanese-like Name of France’s Most Streamed Musician

Aya Nakamura is not translated as 中村 in Japanese

Most people know Lady Gaga, Celine Dion, and probably Ariana Grande, some of the most notable singers at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. But you may not know Aya Nakamura unless you’re French. Her singing was accompanied by the French national guards, and according to news media, “She Proves Why She’s France’s Biggest Star at the 2024 Paris”, and she is “France’s most streamed musician”. When Le Figaro posted a message on Facebook a few days before Celine Dion would come to perform, one reader posted a comment, in French of course, to the effect that we have our own Aya (why do we invite a foreigner?).

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Source: Yahoo News

Here I’m going to talk about Aya’s name. Her last name clearly appears to be Japanese. She was born Aya Danioko in Mali, a West Africa country, and is now a French citizen. She adopted a Japanese name because she liked the protagonist Hiro Nakamura in the American drama Heroes. Although Hiro Nakamura, the fictional character, is not acknowledged anywhere to be Japanese, he speaks Japanese as well as English, is played by an East Asian actor, and his behavior in the act proves him to be Japanese through and through.

Why does this matter? If a name is clearly a Japanese one, when it’s translated into Japanese, should it use Japanese Hiragana and/or Kanji instead of Katakana, which is only used to transliterate a foreign name?

Intuitively, I would think so. Nakamura is almost unambiguously the surname 中村 in Japanese. We may expect Aya Nakamura’s last name to be 中村 in Japanese. Right? But according to the Japanese page of Wikipedia, it is actually アヤ・ナカムラ, a sound transliteration using Katakana. In fact, the webpage even warns that “「中村綾」あるいは「中村彩」とは別人です” (this is a person different from 中村綾 or 中村彩). In other words, the Japanese do not recognize Aya Nakamura as a real Japanese name, and the readers of this Japanese webpage should distinguish her name from 中村綾 and 中村彩, two authentic Japanese names. It’s not clear whether this rejection is due to lack of research on why she adopted this name or simply because they know she is not of Japanese descent in spite of her stage name.

Interestingly, the Chinese page of Wikipedia for her does say 阿雅·中村. Whoever translated it must have done research on her name, because if it were unrelated to Japanese and happened to be spelled Nakamura, the Chinese name would sure be a pure transliteration, for instance, 纳卡穆拉 (pronounced nà kǎ mù lā).

In the translation field, no international standard stipulates that if a proper noun in the source language is intentionally chosen to be, or otherwise remarkably resembles, a name in the target language which uses a different writing script, the noun must be transliterated as if the name existed natively in the target language. But some translators do so anyway. For example, the English last name Lee is transliterated as 李 (pronounced lǐ) in Chinese instead of using any other homonym character because 李 is a popular Chinese surname, even though the name Lee is completely unrelated to the Chinese culture. This is done out of custom, not because of any standard. If an American or British person chooses a Chinese name even if it’s in pinyin spelling only, the Chinese media will readily render it in Chinese characters.

The Japanese, though, think of this differently. A foreigner’s name stays foreign, as if Hiragana or Kanji is reserved for unadulterated Japanese only. Well, that’s fine. We should not over-speculate. People of different cultures have different customs, including in the area of language translation.

About me: I’m a language lover. For more about my work on languages and linguistics, see http://yong321.freeshell.org/misc.html#lang