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[There seems to be](http://etc.dounokouno.com/bushu-search/bushu-list.html) a
great many nicknames, but only one official name for each radical. I'm thus
more inclined to learn the latter, but I'm left wondering about the
practicality of that. All of the other radical lists that I've seen, whether
English or Japanese, only list the nicknames. Are the official names rarely
used in Japanese? Is it worth learning them? What about the nicknames, should
I learn all of them? And most importantly, which names will show on the Kanji
Kentei (漢字検定{かんじけんてい})?
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word-choice words kanji radicals
Official radical names (部首{ぶしゅ}名称{めいしょう}) vs radical nicknames (部首{ぶしゅ}通称{つうしょう})
At Japanese elementary and middle school, students learn the 通称 names in the
table in the linked page. Virtually every native Japanese adult knows しんにょう
and ぎょうにんべん, but not 辵部【ちゃくぶ】 nor 彳部【てきぶ】. I don't know where these "official"
names are used.

On 漢字検定, it appears that [the names of 部首 are not directly
asked](http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q1252268412).
Instead, you need to write the radical itself
([example](http://kanken2kyu.jimdo.com/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E3%81%AE%E9%83%A8%E9%A6%96-%E5%95%8F%E9%A1%8C%E9%9B%86/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E3%81%AE%E9%83%A8%E9%A6%96-%E9%9B%A3%E5%95%8F%E5%AF%BE%E7%AD%96/)).
This is probably because there are no official names for these radicals while
there are too many nicknames found in various dictionaries. Still it can be
safely said that average Japanese people learn radicals using one of the
"nicknames" on the right column.

I can't tell how many radical nicknames you need to learn... It depends on
what you want to do by learning these names.
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2016-08-16T03:15:50.880
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The 名称 are based on the imported Chinese words (音読み). The 通称 are based on the
original Japanese words (訓読み). Describing a kanji based on the 名称 will be
technically correct among scholars but may be ambiguous if the listener is not
fluent in the official names. The 通称 are more easily understood because
they're drawn from common words.

For example, 台 would be easily understood as a katakana ム over a kuchi 口. But
if I described it as a #28 しぶ on top and a #30 こうぶ on the bottom, it might not
be as widely understood, even though that's technically a flawless
description.

Yet the 通称 are only as useful as you already understand Japanese. For native
speakers, these are used simply because everyone would know the word already,
and they're unambiguous. For example, "さんぶ" could still be ambiguous because
it could be 三 or 山, while "やまやまへん" clarifies that you mean "the mountain one."

My advice for early learners is not to learn the radical names. It's a lot of
work for not much payoff, and you risk looking overly bookish in your usage.
It would be like an ESL student learning the AP style differences among French
brackets {}, regular brackets [], and parentheses ().

Rather, as you go along and learn vocabulary, you'll come up with your own
mnemonic devices for remembering kanji, and will allow you to form your own 通称
that will be just as effective as those "official" common descriptions.
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