68044
During my studying via Kanji Study app I came across the kanji for the word,
pardon my French, vagina. Of course, I was curious whether the names with the
kanji existed. "Nah," I thought. "There is no way it could exist." I proved to
be wrong.

Apparently, there is a name 膣子{ちつこ} (vagina + child).

The same thing with 醜子{しゅうこ} (ugly + child).

Maybe the latter serves as "break a leg" shout in theatres since it was widely
considered that if you voice something it'll definitely not happen? Anyway, I
don't understand how they came up with those and why.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-05-04T15:45:42.497
67970
2019-05-06T21:59:13.433
2019-05-06T20:43:41.880
33880
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question
words etymology names
Why would parents ever want to name their daughters with the following names?
膣子 and 醜子 are not real person names. They may be possible as funny pen names
or such, but for real person names, they are out of the question. I doubt a
local government will accept registrations of such names.

* * *

Looks like `#names` function of jisho.org is severely broken and vandalized.
Many results seem to be poor-quality machine generated readings, but there are
also many clearly-vandalized data. For example, it says [田村 is read
えりりん/くらりせ/まちるで](https://jisho.org/search/%E7%94%B0%E6%9D%91%20%23names), [佐々木
is read
いしだ/にいくら](https://jisho.org/search/%E4%BD%90%E3%80%85%E6%9C%A8%20%23names),
[佐藤 is read
さとあ/さいう/さいとう](https://jisho.org/search/%E4%BD%90%E8%97%A4%20%23names), and so
on. Even though the main part of jisho.org is (usually) useful, for now, you
should ignore those "names" data. 膣子 and 醜子 also should be some sort of
vandalism.
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2019-05-06T00:21:36.653
68019
2019-05-06T00:21:36.653
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answer
Setting aside the initial question of _"why would parents ever want to name
their daughters with the following names"_.

# Lexicography, and when a given string can be considered an official "word"
or "name"

Let's start at the top:

## What is a "word"?

In **functional** terms, a "word" could be defined as any specific combination
of sounds that can be used to convey a specific range of meaning. When it
comes to the written form, we then also talk about how this "word" is spelled.
Usually, a "word" must be limited in size -- in written forms, for alphabetic
languages, it's usually that set of characters between spaces.

Note that this "word" **must convey meaning**. I can decide that
**adsf8799zyih** means "I'm going to the bathroom on Tuesday", but if no one
else understands this, it's not _functionally_ a word. If, however, a bunch of
my friends and I start using **adsf8799zyih** with this meaning, then (at
least for us) it takes on a quality of "word-ness".

### What is a "real" word?

This word **adsf8799zyih** is made up. No dictionary will include this, not
now.

Whether or not a word is "real" and worthy of inclusion in a dictionary is,
honestly, a bit arbitrary. However, if _enough_ people all agree that
**adsf8799zyih** has a meaning that everyone can agree on, then it starts to
take on social significance on a bigger scale. If enough people use this word,
with the agreed-upon meaning, for a long enough time, dictionary editors might
consider adding it to their next edition.

Now for the next part.

## What is a "name"?

A "name" is basically a specific kind of "word", whereby the meaning of the
"word" is a specific person.

### What is a "real" name?

Much like for "real" words, whether or not a given name is considered "real"
can be a bit arbitrary. Broadly speaking, it must be used by _enough_ people
as a name (to refer to a specific person), in an agreed-upon fashion (as in,
"yes, this is the name of a person or other living thing, and it does not
refer to furniture, or vegetables, or planets, or...").

In addition, the "name-ness" of a given label may depend on other factors. For
Japanese, one of those factors is the Japanese government, which actually does
impose certain restrictions on what kind of label can be used as an official
"name".

→ This is where you're finding some of the resistance to your queries -- the
Japanese government hasn't ever allowed, and likely never will allow, either
膣子 or 醜子 as official names.

→ Consequently, the effective answer to your initial question is "parents
_cannot_ name their children either 膣子 or 醜子 (and therefore the 'why' question
is [moot](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/moot#English))".

# Data-gathering: Provenance

As you've discovered, 膣子 does actually show up online as a "name" of sorts.

However, before we can take this as proof that 膣子 exists as an official name,
we must investigate the _provenance_ of this data: who gathered it, and where
did this information come from, and what other details can we discover?

As others have noted above, the dictionaries that include 膣子 seem to all trace
back to one or two apparently tainted sources, and thus they cannot be treated
as reliable as proof of the "official-ness" of any name.

Looking more deeply at confirmable instances where 膣子 appears, such as [Google
searches](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22%E8%86%A3%E5%AD%90%22), we see
that the top-most hits are Twitter handles (where people can use whatever they
want as their "name"), followed by the vandalized Jisho.org entry, and then
several hits that appear to be Chinese rather than Japanese. None of this
provides any compelling evidence that this is a "real" name for official
purposes. We can add a Japanese particle to our search to ensure we're getting
Japanese hits, such as [this search for
"膣子"+"は"](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22%E8%86%A3%E5%AD%90%22+%22%E3%81%AF%22),
but again we find only Twitter handles, Chinese strings quoted in Japanese
texts, and mysterious hits that don't seem to actually include the "膣子"
characters in this order.

All told, the evidence is that 膣子 does exist as a kind of name, but the
evidence also shows that this is most likely a nickname or unofficial label.

### Conclusions

Pulling together everything we can find about these two purported names, we
can only conclude that these are not "official", and can thus never be used as
children's official names. They might appear as nicknames, either applied by
someone to themselves, or to other people.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-05-06T21:59:13.433
68044
2019-05-06T21:59:13.433
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answer